





i6^:y4t^' 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 






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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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An Agtor's Tour 




DANIEL E. BANDMANN, AS HAMLET, 

From the Painting by the late. William M. Hunt, in tfie possession of 
Mrs. William M. Hunt, Boston. 



BOSTON : CUPPLES, UPHAM & CO., Publishers. 



AN ACTOR'S TOUR 



OR 



Seventy Thousand Miles with Shakespeare 



DANIEL E. BANDMANN 



EDITED BY 

BARNARD GISBY 



fV/TJ/ PORTRAIT AFTER W. M. HUNT 



2 10^7 (P 



BOSTON 

CUPPLES, UPHAM AND COMPANY 

(4tfee eSlti <!rorner "^Booft .t»tore 

283 Washington Street 

iSSc 



y 

COPYEIGIITED, 1885, BY CtTPPLES, IJPHAM & CO. 



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Electrotjiped and Priixted Uj Stanley and Usher, Boston. 



PliEFACE. 



"What, shall this speech be spoke for oui* excuse? 
Oi- shall we on without apology? " 

_^ — Romeo and Juliet, Act i, sc. 4. 

A TOUB around the world, not to emphasize travels 
of three times that extent, which would have been 
sufficient within an easily appreciable number of 
decades to have rendered a man an object of unusual 
interest to his acquaintances, and a jphenomenon in 
general society, can nowadays have no such effect ; and, 
in offering this book to the public, the author does not 
delude himself so far as to imagine that on such a score 
he is proffering anything of exceptional importance. 
To-day every one is a traveler ; many have made the 
circuit of the world. 

Science has wrought marvels as by the hand of 
a magician, yet by iio wand of enchantment, but by 
patient conquest and mastery of the mighty energies 
of nature. Steam and electricity, if they have not 
diminished, have at least revolutionized, conceptions 
and thoughts that have prevailed in relation to the 
world, encircling it with a network of appliances that 
makes communication and travel between the most 
distant places possible, so that with a not very consid- 
erable amount of money and a few months of leisure 
the most ordinary mortal may become a rival of Captain 
Cook. Puck, it would seem, was endowed by the 
transcendent genius of the immortal Bard with a 



vi PEE FACE. 

wonderful prescience of the drift of human events, 
when he said : — 

" I '11 put a girdle round about the earth 
In forty minutes." 

Those, however, who wish to build a reputation on 
travel had better attemjpt something less common in 
that direction than a trip around, or simply extensive 
journeyings to and fro over the well-known highroads 
of, the world, and be quick about it, as the chances of 
success are each day becoming fewer, the possibilities 
of originality decreasing ; still, however, there remain 
grounds for hope that adventurous spirits may come 
here or there on an unexplored spot, if only they have 
the courage, resolution, patience, and heroism to turn 
aside from beaten tracks into untrodden solitudes : 
to follow, in brief, the footsteps of a Livingstone, 
a Stanley, or a Greely. Modern science, by its dis- 
coveries, explorations, inventions, and adaptations of 
natural forces to the service of man, has produced two 
opposite impressions on the mind. In the first place, 
it has made man conscious of the limitations of the 
world as a whole ; proved beyond a doubt, so far as 
longitude and latitude are concerned, that humanity 
lives and moves and has its being in a very small place ; 
that the orb which is its home is " cribbed, cabined, 
and confined " — an atom-world in the immensities of 
space and the eons of eternity. Schiller, perhaps, 
was thinking of the growth, development, and progress 
of the race, no less than of the individual, when he 
sang of "The Child": — 

"Happy infant! to tliee an infinite space is the cradle. 
When to man's age thou shalt come, nan'ow thou 'It think the wide 
world ! " 



PREFACE. vii 

But science has not stopped liere. In the second 
place, it has opened man's eyes to the infinite interests 
and ineffable wonders there are within the bounds of 
his habitation ; discovered worlds where least he dreamed 
of them : in the merest atom of dust, in the minutest 
molecule of matter, every square inch of circumambient 
atmosphere, each drop of water ; in the iris of an eye, 
a pulse-beat, the faintest note of sound; in the sun- 
beam, a ray of light, a phosphorescent gleam ; in a 
blade of grass, " a primrose by a river's brim," the 
" flower in the crannied wall " ; in the fungi, the worm, 
and the ant. In each of these science has revealed a 
microcosm, and brought man face to face with what 
cannot be otherwise regarded than as the transcendent 
marvel of the whole creation — the perpetual miracle 
of the universe — the presence of law, order, fitness, 
beauty, or life, in the least as in the greatest things. 

The author of this book purposed, however, no such 

task as the building of a reputation as a traveler. 

His sympathies and profession have chained him almost 

exclusively to the civilized world, and seldom allowed of 

his passing out of well-trodden paths into the byways 

or the trackless regions of the earth, even to gratify the 

passion of discovery, to manifest a transient interest in 

savages or 

" The sweetest innocent(8) ^ 
That e'er did lift up eye," 

suckled at the soft, fruitful breast of nature herself. 
But, notwithstanding this, it is thought the book may 
have some amount of interest from the fact that no 
other professional man has ever undertaken a world-tour 
like that of which the story is told in these pages, 
accompanied by a group of a dozen actors and 



viii PEE FACE. 

actresses, performing the loftiest works of Shakespeare, 
and other great masters of the drama, before the 
various nations of the earth, and with results most 
gratifying to all concerned. Not to speak of great 
monetary gains, mindful of what Timon of Athens 
has said : — 

"Gold? yellow, glittering, precious gold? No, gods, 
I am no idle votarist. Roots, you clear heavens! 
Thus much of this will make black, white; foul, fair; 
Wrong, right; base, noble; old, young; coward, valiant. 
Ha! yoii gods, why this? What this, you gods? Why this 
Will lug your priests and servants from your sides; 
Pluck stout men's pillows from below their heads. 
This yellow slave 

Will knit and break religions; bless the accurs'd; 
Make the hoar leprosy ador'd; place thieves, 
And give them title, knee, and approbation. 
With senators on the bench: this is it 
That makes the wappen'd widow wed again : 
She, whom the spital-house, and ulcerous sores 
Would cast the gorge at, this embalms and spices 
To the April day again." 

There were rewards of quite a different nature that 
the actor, true artist as he is, found of highest satisfac- 
tion, namely, the proofs he witnessed everywhere of 
a deep-rooted sentiment in mankind that responds to 
the beautiful ; a love of art when represented at its best, 
and a passionate admiration for that supreme master of 
the drama, to the interpreting of whose plays he has 
devoted the best years of his life — Shakespeare. To 
this there were no exceptions worth ;mentioning. 
Wherever he played there was a public, wishful to 
appreciate the marvelous creations of dramatic genius. 
The Muses of the stage were there : Thalia, with power 
to open the sweet fountains of laughter : Melpomene, 
the sorrowful wells of tears. Local and provincial some 
plays may be, but the highest conceptions of the drama, 



PREFACE. 



performed with the insight, culture, sympathy, devotion, 
and enthusiasm of the true artist, are ever a universal 
language. The story of three and a half busy years of 
the actor's life is given in this book, which has been 
written in concession to an outside pressure that 
a record of a tour more extensive than any other 
actor has made might be laid before the public, and it 
is hoped that it may afford pleasant reading to all, and 
be to thousands of his supporters throughout the world 
a welcome souvenir of the ^^.y^ of hard work, but of 
rare happiness, which he spent among them. His aim 
in life has been to give pleasure to others, and, at 
the same time, to exalt the actor's art and ennoble 
the theatrical profession, maintaining that scholarship, 
culture, imagination, sympathy, sensibility, and love of 
the beautiful, are nowhere more necessary than on the 
modern stage ; in pursuance of this he has assumed 
many characters, and he now sincerely trusts that those 
who may at any time have been interested in, or pleased 
by, him as Narcisse, Hamlet, Othello, lago, Macbeth, 
Richard III, Shylock, or some other of his roles, will 
be glad to recognize an old acquaintance with a new 
face, even though that new face is his own : and give 
a hearty welcome to these images, in which he tells 
something of his professional experience : that, as an 
author, he may meet with the same generous sympathy 
that it has been his privilege to enjoy as an actor. 

All that need be said of the editor's part and 
lot in the matter is that the services here rendered 
have been given in great admiration for an actor 
who is, at the same time, an artist; sincere and 
deep regard for a man who is, at the same time, 
a gentleman ; and in that pardonable pride of number- 



PREFACE. 



ing among one's best friends a member of tlie dramatic 
profession who lias both great genius and large gen- 
erosity. The book is left to public judgment, which 
will be the true arbiter of its worth and fate, but should 
it be its destiny, here or there, to fall into the hands of 
a critic of the type Douglas Jerrold had in view when 
he said : " Oh, yes, he '11 review the book as an east wind 
reviews an apple-tree," it is hoped that there is some- 
thing in it that will save it, even though " east wind " 
criticism may blow upon it, from being carried into that 
limbo of authors — the world of forgotten literature. 

Baknard Gisby. 
Boston, November, 1SS4. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. — Australia. 

NEW SOUTH WALES. — SYDNEY. 

Early passion for travel — The Baldwin Tlieatre, San Francisco 

— Clara Morris — A new acquaintance, Louise Beaudct — How 
she came to play Lady Macbeth — Charlie Ackerman — Com- 
pagno7is de voyage — The Pacific Mail Steamship Company — 
Sydney — Commercial and material prosperity — Artistic spirit 

— "Art needs repose, not action " — The theatres — The "colo- 
nials" — The Bishop of Melbourne's opinion of the "colonial" 
youth — The " larikins " — Old friends — A month at the Opera 
House — A story of two old ti-agedians — Judge Wyndier — His 
delight in Shakespeare — A judicial experience — Grand situa- 
tion of the city — Edward Greville — Port Jackson — A man- 
of-war — The Public Gardens — Hawkesbury River — The Blue 
Mountains — Lovet's Leap 1 

CHAPTER II. — Australia. 

QUEENSLAND. — BRISBANE. 

Privileges of the theatrical profession — A story of the colonial 
bishops — The city — The Bank Buildings — The Brisbane River 

— A. magnificent engagement — The climate — The houses — 
Storms — Moreton Bay — Stranded — Sand-sailing — Sharks — 
A boy's heroism — Goulburn — Cherries ripe! — Wagga Wagga 

— Albxiry 21 

CHAPTER III. — New Zealand. 

SOUTH ISLAND. — DUNEDIN. — CHRISTCHURCH. 

The Bluff— New Zealand ports — Invercargill — Dunedin, the queen 
of New Zealand cities — The Scotch — Port Clialmers — Two 
systems of railroad — The city buildings — The situation — 
Farming in Otago — Frozen meat — Mountain scenery — The 
roads — Convict - laborers — A convict-artist — The waterworks 

— Drinking-fountains — The suburbs — Heresy and orthodoxy 

— A grim bishop — Dr. Byng and the liberal clergy — The High 



CONTENTS. 



School — Children at the theatre — Dramatic readings in the 
Temperance Hall — Shakespeare in English, German, and 
Trench — Speeches — " Blue - fire " — "The ghost began to 
cough!"— The hotels — Means of transit— Horse-breeding — 
Daily papers — Professor Alexander Wilson— A great success 
—Farewell to Dunedin — Timaru—Christchurch— Public build- 
ings- The spirit of the place — Orthodox religiosity and Art 

— The Honorable Mr. Romilly — The climate— The only nat- 
ural atti-action — The Public Gardens — The Museum — The 
moa — Lyttelton — The Canterbury plains 27 

CHAPTER IV. — New Zealand. 

NORTH ISLAND. — WELLINGTON. —NAPIER. — AUCKLAND. 

The seat of the government — Tlie public buildings — The climate 

— The Museum — The theatre — The governor, Sir Arthur Gor- 
don — Lady Gordon — A " Judas " — Wanganui — Napier — 
The situation — The Scotch element — Judge Kenny — Auck- 
land — Changes in ten years — The Duke of Edinburgh — Story 
of an English officer and a Maori girl — Civilization and the 
Maoris — A noble warrior-race — Hongi Ika, the great chief — 
His memorable last words — The war of 1845 — Heke — His 
address to his people — Maori superstition — Divination — The 
tohungas — The mataika — Heke's fort at Mawhe — Te Atua 
Wera — His exhortation — " The European God " — A runaway 
slave — Kawiti — Te Kahakaha — Heke's heroism and grandeur 
of character — A painful problem — England and her colonies 

— The Earl of Pembroke — Too little consistency in govern- 
ment — The Maoris and religion — The Old Testament preferred 
to the New — The massacre of Poverty Bay — The Hau Haus 

— Te Kooti — Ropata — Class distinctions — Cannibalism — Im- 
mortality — Marriage — Tattooing — The way a chief shows 
favor — Names — Tobacco — The mere ponainu — Love of war- 
fare — Story of a Maori law - student — The Bang Country — 
Half-caste — The Thames gold-fields — Lake Taupo— Rotoraa- 
hana Springs — Mountains — The Ruahine range — The Mana- 
watu — New Plymouth — Coaching across country — Taranaki 
Province — An amusing incident — A Maori salutation .... 49 

CHAPTER v. — Tasmania. 

HOBART TOWN. 

The old convict establishments — A story of the past — Port Arthur 

— The Derwent River — Mount Wellington — English traits 
of the people and country — No disagreeable insects — No wild 
animals, except the black opossum — Produce — Orchards — 
Whale - fisheries — The seat of the government — Climate — 



CONTENTS. 



Drives — Fern - trees — Forests — The roads — Salmon - trout — 
Mineral wealth — The habits of the people — Love of Art — 
The Government House grounds — The Botanical Gardens 

— The railroad — Launceston 75 

CHAPTER VI. — Australia. 

VICTORIA. — MELBOURNE. 

The Opera House — "Dead or Alive" — A successful engagement 

— Australian passion for gambling — Horse - racing — The 
"Derby" — Sir Wilfrid Lawson and Mr. Parnell — The Mel- 
bourne Cup — The ladies are inveterate gamblers — The grand 
stand — How the ladies dress — Two hundred thousand people 
assemble on the course — The " Cup " and the " Totalisator " — 
Burke Street — Supporters of the turf — The squatters — A good 
squatting -station — The squatter's enemies — Melbourne pre- 
eminently modem — Indifference to the higher aims of Art — 
Theatrical managers — Public institutions — The suburbs — Mr. 
Mowbray, mayor of Melbourne— The Duke of Edinburgh — 
Charles Mathews — Sunday in Australia — The art of cooking 

— The need of good hotels— Rover and Jessie are taken on 
board the Galatea — The German Turn Verein 82 

CHAPTER VII. — Australia. 

SOUTH AUSTRALIA. — ADELAIDE. 

Old fi'iends — Von Treue — Sir James and Lady Edith Fergusson 

— Dramatic critics — John Oxenford, Tom Taylor, and Mr. 
Mowbry Morris — Adelaide a provincial town — More liquor 
is drunk than water — The resources and possibilities of the 
country — The Soliloquy and Ophelia scenes from Hamlet in 
German — The Botanical Gardens — Some of the company 
afraid of the climate of India, and refuse to go — A young 
lady who thought she resembled the Venus of Milo or the 
Venus de' Medici — New members of the company — Captain 
Sharland sings " The Vagabond " 101 

CHAPTER VIII. — India. 

CEYLON. — MADRAS. 

Point de GaUe — The character and the dress of the natives — The 
Cinn.amon Gardens — Cocoanut-farms — The New Year festival 
— The native jewelers — A tei-riflc sea — Madras a beautiful 
town — First experience of a pnnMa — Newspapers — The club- 
house — Government House — A great banquet — A variety- 
show — One who wears a "Victoria Cross" 112 



COXTUNTS. 



CHAPTER IX.— India. 

CALCUTTA. — I. 

The Ganges — The city a -wonderland of Oriental magnificence — 
The houses — The metas — The drive along the Maidan — All 
nationalities represented — The Eden Garden — Sir Ashley Eden 
— Hindu servants — The theatres — The Corinthian — Christmas 
eve in Calcutta — The Great Eastern Hotel — Their Excellencies 
the Marquis and Marchioness of Ripon — Lord Lytton — Lord 
William Beresford and his brother Charlie — A little dinner- 
party at which the Duke of Edinburgh provided the music — 
The Calcutta season — Rajahs and maharajahs — The enormous 
wealth of the Maharajah of Darbungha — His residence, man- 
ners, and character — The Cooch Behar — The Woodlands — 
The love of Shakespeare amongst the Hindus — The works of 
the Bard prized next to the Zendavesta, the Vedas, the Koran, 
or the Bible — The Hindus learn English from Shakespeare — 
The nature of the Hindus — The Brahmo Somaj — Babu Keshub 
Chunder Sen — Tribute to his character, spirit, and Avork ... 120 



CHAPTER X.— India. 

CALCUTTA. — II. 

The exclusively Hindu theatres — Three thousand Hindus witness 
Othello and The Merchant of Venice — East Lynne : an incident 
in its performance — Leah, the Forsaken — The Marchioness of 
Ripon and Romeo and Juliet — What a European can stand in 
the way of work — An Eurasian plays Dogbei-ry — A midnight 
visit to the Burning Ghaut — The method of cremation as prac- 
tised by the Hindus — The miscalled " quarter of pleasure " — 
The Botanical and Zoological Gardens — " Old Grizzly " — The 
cobra de capello — The mongoose — No cobras in Calcutta — 
A bad joke — The character of the Hindus — New Year's day 
in Calcutta — Hindu hospitality — A babu's family bed — Hindu 
marriages — Hindu wives — The empalenieut of widows — The 
Hindus compared with the Chinese — Hindu men superior to 
the women — The ambition of the men to practise law — The 
fascination of the law court for the Hindus — Perjury the com- 
monest crime in the country — Sir Henry De Witt, the chief 
justice of Ceylon — How an old judge of Copenhagen got at the 
truth — The ways of p.. Hindu pleader — Police proceedings with 
suspects — Hindu servants — A Bengal judge and his trusted 
servant — Personal experiences with Hindu servants — Court- 
life in Calcutta — The children's garden-party — The hotels . . 141 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XI. — India. 

BOMBAY. 

Malibar Hill — Apollo Bunda — The Gaiety the finest theatre in 
India — Sir James Fergusson, the govei-nor — The Parsccs — 
The Mazdean religion — The morning offerings at the temples 

— The Silent Towers — The Parsee conception of nature and 
life — The rarsecs speak English and are great admirers of 
Shakespeare — Four young Parsee medical students play parts 
in Hamlet — A Hindu marriage — Hindu theosophy — Jugger- 
naut, the " Lord of the World " — Symbolism in Religion . . 168 

CHAPTEK XII. — China. 

SHANGHAI. 

An interesting city — The three foreign settlements : English, Ameri- 
can, French — Old Shanghai walled around — Population of the 
entire city not definitely known — The climate — The inhabitants 

— The influence of the Germans — The clubhouse — The German 
minister, llerr Von Bran<l — Shanghai society — A bracelet of 
brilliants is presented to Miss Beaudet — A peculiarity of the 
society — The theatre the finest in the East — A little Chinese 
boy is " made up " and plays the Duke of York — An incident 
in the performance of East Lynne — The theatre of the natives : 
its legendary liistory and its peculiarities — The historical plays 

— The comedies — A remark of Sir Philip Sidney on the English 
stage in 1583 will apply to the Chinese stage of the present time 

— " The Birthday of the Moon " — The " mixed " court — Judge 
Chen — A smart prisoner 178 

CHAPTER XIII. — China. 

HONG-KONG. 

Hotels in China — An action for libel — The English law — The 
" Rousby " case — The late lord chief justice of England — The 
late Sergeant Parry — Mr. Gordon, tlie scenic -artist — Mr. 
Willing, the London theatrical advertising -agent — The ex- 
pensiveness of truth — Sir George Phillippo 204 

CHAPTER XIV. — China. 

CANTON. 

The gin-ric-sha — Tha German Concordia Club — Herr Streich, the 
German consul — The European settlements — The old and the 



CONTENTS. 



modern city — Two circuits of walls — The streets —" The blind 
loading the blind " — Persons too poor to be beggars —Lepers — 
I^eper villages — Ivory-carviug — Embroidery and painting on 
silk — The prison and its discipline — The mandarins: their ex- 
actions and robberies — A typical case — Capital punishment — 
The prisoners and the wardens — Performance in the hall of the 
Concordia Club — Edward II. House — Willy Winter — Horace 
Greeley — The late Charles Reade — A typhoon — The life- 
saving bi'igade — Colonel Mosely, the American consul .... 216 



CHAPTER XV. — Malay Peninsula. 

SINGAPORE. 

The centre of the East — The climate — The great commercial 
importance of the place — Its magnificent geographical position 
— Its produce — The residences and clubhouses of the Euro- 
peans — The Germans in Singapore — The Governor, His Ex- 
cellency Sir E. A. Weld, and Lady Weld — The theati-e — The 
Sultan of Sooloo — His eiglit wives — His dress and his jewels — 
A black pearl with the charm of immortality — His great- 
grandfather—His sword - bearer — The ancestral sword — The 
sultan a cheap guest — A monkey-hunt — The sultan and his 
eight wives at the theatre — The German Teutonia Club — 
A complimentary ball — A testimonial 230 



CHAPTER XVI. — India. 

CEYLON. 

Colombo — The best season of the year — The Western monsoon — 
The coffee-planters and the coffee-worm — The enterprise of the 
settlers — The fine roads — Ruin from the coffee - worm — The 
Singalese — The coolies — A coolie's feat of strength — The best 
hotels in the East — Mr. Beresford Hope — The Governor, Sir 
J. R. Longden, and Lady Longden — The commanding - general 
— Performances in the schoolroom of the barracks — A great 
success — Gentlemen amateurs — The soldiers of the garrison — 
The band — Singalese Catholics — Moslem jewelers — Brum- 
magem jewels — Kandy, the capital — The Government House 
grounds — Lady Horton's promenade — The lake and the walk 
around it — The legend of the lake — The royal mausoleum — 
The Great Temple — The fate of a king's wives in olden time — 
Newara Ellya, the summer resort — A scene of fashion and 
amusement — English residents — Cinchona — Don Pedro — 
Elephants — A " rogue " —Mr. Saunders — A Colombo benefit . 240 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XVII. — India. 

BOMBAY. — MADRAS. — RANGOON. — MOULMEIN. 

Second visit to Bombay — Couuter- attractions — An unpopular 
theatre — Madras — A grand success — Rangoon — A novel thea- 
tre — Chinese carpenters — A poor set of Europeans — Eurasians 
and Albanians — The King of Burmah — Moulmein — Two days 
in the Gulf of Martaban 253 

CHAPTER XVIII. —Australia. 

PORT DARWIN. 

Old friends — The governor — The telegraphic importance of the 
pla(!e — Mineral wealth — Inauguration of the Town Hall — 
Caste — The Chinese residents — A cannibal village 256 

CHAPTER XIX. — AUSTRALIA. 

THURSDAY ISLAND. 

Coral and pearl fisheries — Tricks of the fishermen — New Guinea — 
Torres Straits — A coral reef — The Tanadice in danger — The 
coast scenery 260 

CHAPTER XX. — Australia. 

TOWNSVILLE. — SYDNEY. — MELBOURNE. 

Cooktown — Townsville — Cook's River — Crocodiles— A trooper's 
story — Charter's Towers — Rockhampton — Maryborough — 
Brisbane — Sydney — A AVoman of the People — Temperance 
reform — The clergy — The Reverend C. F. Garnsey's letter — 
Lady Loftus — Great enthusiasm — Melbourne — Geelong — 
Tasmania — Auckland — The Zcalandia — Compagnons de 
voyage — The brothers Redmond — Miss Hampson, the revi- 
valist — " Ever so many sinners " — Captain Weber — Miss 
Hampson's opinions on Art and the theatre — She tells a story 
of her early gifts — A poor German pastor — Entertainment on 
board for the Seamen's Shipwreck and Orphan Society 2G4 

CHAPTER XXI. —Hawaiian Islands. 

HONOLULU. 

Old friends — His majesty, King Kalakaua — ^Zo/(rt/ — King Kame- 

hameha V— Lunalila, his successor — His admiration for his 

ancestor, Kamehamcha I — Lnnalila's character and habits — 

A visit to his suburban cottage — Stories of him — " Firewater " 



CONTENTS. 



— The old Hawaiian laws against spirituous liquors — The 
repeal of those laws a great misfortune — A land of " brotherly 
love" — The Hawaiians — The probable total extinction of the 
Hawaiian race — The causes — The Hawaiian nobility — The 
prosperity of the islands — The white man's blessings — The 
Hawaiian kings have an open eye for business — Iving Kameha- 
meha's poi factory — King Kalakaua's service of city cabs — 
Residences of the upper class — The new royal palace— The 
throne- room — Produce, manufactures, and shipping — The 
reciprocity treaty with the United States — International com- 
munication—The position of the Chinese— The scales turned 
toward America — The government seemingly monarchical, in 
reality a republic— The king's power —The privy council and 
legislature — Electoral representation — Government expenses 
—King Kalakaua's the most prosperous of all reigns —The king's 
appearance, character, and habits — John Cummins, the king's 
friend— His influence over the natives — A Ztw/a — Waimanalo — 
The Pali — Good Mexican mustangs — " The world moves" — 
A Hawaiian reception — Sugar-mills — The king's aiTival — A 
great banquet— The fttttefo^i— Hawaiian music — The public 
taste of Honolulu — The theati-e — The public library — Celebra- 
tion of the prime minister's birthday — Colonel Spreckels — The 
king's political vicM's — Christian Chinese — San Francisco again, 
after traveling seventy thousand miles by land and sea. . . . • 277 



AN ACTOR'S TOUR. 



CHAPTER I. — Australia. 

NEW SOUTH WALES. — SYDNEY. 

" Little shall I grace my cause, 
In speaking for myself: Yet, by your gracious patience, 
I will a round, unvarnish'd tale deliver." 

— Othello, Act i, sc. 3. 

" All places that the eye of heaven visits, 
Are to the Avise man ports and happy havens." 

— Richard II, Act i, sc. 3. 

Early passion for travel — The Baldwin Theatre, San Francisco — 
Clara Morris — A new acquaintance, Louise Beaudet — How she 
came to play Lady Macbeth — Charlie Ackerman — Compagnons de 
voyage — The Pacific Mail Steam sliip Company — Sydney — Com- 
mercial and material prosperity — Artistic spirit — " Art needs 
repose, not action " — The theatres — The " colonials " — The bishop 
of Melbourne's opinion of the " colonial " youth — The " larikins " — 
Old friends — A month at the Opei'a House — A story of two old 
ti'agedians — Judge Wjmdier — His delight in Shakespeare — A 
judicial experience — Grand situation of the city — Edward Greville 
— Port Jackson — A man-of-war — The Public Gardens — Hawkes- 
bury River — The Blue Mountains — Lovet's Leap. 

From the earliest age, when, indeed, I was quite 
a small boy in the dear German Fatherland, I had 
a great desire for the adventure of travel, and one 
of my chief delights was to wander, in imagina- 
tion, with travelers over the grand, new lands of 
America and Australia, or through the ancient 
and enchanting countries of the East. That 



AX ACTOB'S rOUB. 



juvenile passion was only deepened and strength- 
ened by years, and so it has come to pass that I 
have been all my life a traveler ; and of men who 
have devoted themselves and their talents to the 
dramatic profession I have, on several occasions, 
made more extensive tours than others. 

It was not, however, till May, 1879, that I con- 
ceived the idea of a grand theatrical tour around the 
world, the story of which I am now about to narrate. 
The time at my disposal for anything like literary 
pursuits, and the desire to put what I have to say 
within a readable compass, no less than the unity 
of the narrative, render it imperative that I should 
keep exclusively to an account of this tour, except 
in those cases in which it seems necessary to refer 
to former visits to the same countries, and in 
which later and earlier experiences are inseparably 
linked together, and more recent impressions 
recall tiiose that are more remote. At the time 
the idea took possession of me I was playing an 
engagement at the Baldwin Theatre, San Francisco, 
in which I was supported by one of the best 
companies ever gathered together under one 
management. It included, amongst others, the 
following ladies : Adelina Stanhope, Jeffreys- 
Lewis, Lina Gary, Lily Andrews, Clara Jane 
Walters, Clara Morris, Louise Beaudet; while 
James O'Neil, Bradley, Morrison, and Bishop, 
were amongst the gentlemen of the company. 

Clara Morris was at the time playing my Ophelia, 
out of respect to me because I had encouraged 



NEW SOUTH WALES. — SYDNEY. 



her in the young days of her career, when, twenty 
years before, in Cleveland, she played my Queen 
in Hamlet. Of all the ladies of the company 
Louise Beaudet was the most talented, the one 
whose mind grasped most readily and completely 
the spirit and motive of the character that for the 
time being she impersonated. It was therefore 
arranged that she should play throughout the 
tour the more conspicuous feminine characters 
of Shakespearean, or other, drama that might 
engage us. 

My relations with Louise Beaudet began in 
rather a romantic way, and I state the circum- 
stances here because they are necessary to a full 
understanding of the reasons that led me to give 
her so prominent a position in my company 
throughout this tour, which, by the way, has 
caused some sensation in the dramatic world. 
Up to the time at which I became acquainted 
with Louise Beaudet she had only played the 
inffSnues, but had just left an opera-bouffe com- 
pany to join the drama. She came into my room 
one evening, at the Baldwin Theatre, during 
the period in which I was performing Narcisse 
(a play based on the Pompadour episode in 
French history), to ask me some questions about 
the representation of the part of Jessica in The 
Merchant of Venice, and that of Lazarillo in Don 
Csesar de Bazan, for which she had been cast, not 
feeling sure of the ground she had taken. I 
was at once impressed with the girl's wonderful 



AN ACTOn'S Toun. 



intelligence and personal attractions. Although 
petite, her figure was graceful, her eye sparkling 
with fire, and her tout ensemble told me at once 
that there great talent was hidden. 

I said: "Why do you not play more serious 
parts?" 

The idea struck her with surprise that I should 
think such a thing possible. 

" Do you indeed think that I could play serious 
parts ? " she exclaimed. 

" Of course, I do," said I. 

" Well, do you know, I once thought so myself, 
but people would not believe me because I am 
so little." 

Just then the call-boy entered, saying, "Cur- 
tain's up, sir," and I had only time to add : "Call 
upon me to-morrow afternoon, and I will give you 
my opinion." 

She came next day, and I gave her the part of 
Lady Macbeth to read. She laughed outright. 

" You want me to read that ! " 

" Certainly, I do." 

" But Lady Macbeth is beyond me ; as well ask 
me to stretch forth my hand and touch the stars ! 
It is so difficult ! " 

"I know all that better than you, gentle 
maiden," said I ; " but that 's the very reason I 
want you to read it. By that, I shall be able to 
judge what is in you infinitely better than if 
I had given you an easier piece. Do as I wish 
you, and allow me to judge. I wish to gauge 
your talent." 



NEW SOUTH WALES. — SYDNEY. 



She at once began, and I was not deceived. 
Here, under the cloak of singular modesty, I dis- 
covered very rare ability. After a few lessons, 
she was able to play Lady Macbeth at the Bald- 
win Theatre, and all San Francisco came to laugh 
over " Little Beaudet," and my friends thought I 
was just going to have a lark with them. But 
their opinion changed after they had seen her. 
One of the best critics in California, the veteran 
dramatic editor of the Morning Call and the able 
critic of the Evening Bulletin^ together with the 
editors of the Chronicle, Atlas^ Argonaut, and 
others, pronounced a unanimous verdict upon 
the performance as being a perfect picture. 
Louise Beaudet afterward played Pauline, the 
manager having refused her the part of Juliet 
because Adelaide Neilson was to appear in it, 
and her success as Lady Macbeth had been 
sufficient to create anxiety lest she, if she got 
the chance, might by her brilliant acting mar 
the novelty of Neilson's impersonation of Juliet. 
But she scored another marked success as 
Pauline ; as she did afterward in all her parts. 
Then, having made a brief trip through Oregon, 
where she played Doris Quinault in Narcisse, 
Ophelia in Hamlet, and Desdemona in Othello: 
and I, having fulfilled an engagement in German 
at the California Theatre : we sailed from San 
Francisco, on August 2, by the steamer Australia, 
for Sydney. 

There were many friends to see me off, 



AN AGTOB'S TOUR. 



among whom, and perhaps the most prominent, 
was the genial Charlie Ackerman, who seems 
destined to make a grand career in the political 
history of the United States. But he was there 
to see others off besides myself. Charlie is one 
of the cleverest and handsomest men in California, 
and beyond this he is a man of huge generosity 
of heart. Always ready to do a kind action, and 
to be of service to his fellow-man, he had inter- 
ested himself in a family who had come down in 
the world, through the husband's misfortunes, and 
who were in very straitened circumstances. In 
a way that only his generosity knows how, he had 
got money together to send this family to Sydney, 
where the husband and father had gone to better 
his position. " You will take care of them during 
the trip for my sake, my dear boy," said Charlie, 
" and see that they arrive safely at Sydney." 

Now, Charlie is a man that no one can refuse to 
oblige. I would do anything in the world for him, 
and, of course, I promised, not knowing at the 
time how rash a man may be, even in such slight 
obligations to a friend. I pictured a lady with 
a couple of grown-up children to whom one can 
give occasional courteous attention and assistance ; 
but conceive my amazement when my dear friend, 
at the hour of our parting, introduced me to the 
mother of not less than seven — blessed offspring ! 
the youngest not over twelve months old, and 
just teething, the oldest about twelve years, 
uiclined to be pretty. To my further amazement 



jVEW south wales. — SYDNEY. 



I found tliat three of them were troubled with 
defective speech, and that one liad to guess their 
wishes and demands, and that the j)oor woman 
had not even a nurse with her. At that I was 
greatly ])aiiied, and immediately got a good- 
hearted Irish woman out of the steerage to 
help her. 

I did my utmost in a thoroughly conscientious 
way, as also did several members of my company, 
to alleviate the poor woman's hardships — no easy 
task under, the circumstances, for, alas! those 
seven dear children had whims, fancies, and wants, 
that there seemed no possible means of quieting 
or satisfying. But at last they were landed safely 
in Sydney, and were received by the hap2)y hus- 
band, who was overjoyed to pOssess once more the 
wife of his bosom and handful of chicks ; and I, 
gentle reader, as you may well imagine, equally 
overjoyed in finding myself free of such immense 
responsibilities. 

Apart from such cares as were imposed on me 
by my friend Charlie (heaven forgive him ! ), the 
journey from San Francisco to Sydney was more 
like a picnic than anything else, for the Pacific 
Mail Steamship Company is one of the most 
obliging, courteous, and safest in the world, 
and has reduced journeying to the antipodes to 
a luxur3^ 

The time of my arrival in Sydney was not 
auspicious to ray plans, for I no sooner landed than 
I heard of the destruction by fire of the Victoria 



AX ACTOinS TOUIL 



Theatre, and this necessitated considerable altera- 
tion in the programme I had marked out for 
myself. In Sydney itself I saw immense change. 
I had not been there for upward of ten years, — 
a long period in modern history, — yet I was 
surprised by what had been effected in it. I 
will give my impressions of the entire change the 
country has undergone, so far as the manners and 
moral life are concerned, later on, but I could not 
shut my eyes to one important fact, that Sydney 
had improved commercially most marvelously. 
There is no need to look further than Chicago, 
Denver, or San Francisco, for instances of rapid 
progress in business and population: and the same 
thing impresses one in Sydney ; and, later on, I 
found it was the same with Melbourne, Brisbane, 
and other cities ; they are severally making rapid 
strides toward becoming a metropolis worthy of 
any country and nation. 

But I found that, with this rapid commercial 
development, what I may call the art and poetry 
of life have not kept pace. A purely material- 
istic prosperity has wellnigh destroj'-ed the 
artistic spirit. Sydney impressed me as having 
retrograded in this respect during the last ten 
years, and I fear it is still on the road to greater 
decline. Art has suffered immensely in Sydney 
from its increased prosperity, and perhaps this 
must often be the case, for the spirit of commerce, 
steam, and electricity is not a wholesome medium 
to advance the Beautiful. They are very useful 



NEW SOUTH WALES. — SYDNEY. 



and productive to mankind, but Art wants repose, 
not action. Together with many other improve- 
ments toward the comfort of society, the Sydney 
theatres, like all others throughout Australia, have 
advanced in matters of exterior beauty and utility ; 
but they have sadly declined in love for tlie 
legitimate and sublime. A low class of enter- 
tainments, especially opera bouffe, sensational 
rubbish, and variety-shows, finds greater favor now 
than what used to be looked forward to with the 
most intense delight and pleasure, a legitimate 
play performed by competent actors and actresses. 
Australia, in the middle period of this century, 
could boast of the best stock-companies in the 
world, and every famous actor considered it his 
duty to make a tour through this great, rising 
country. Thus it had visits from Joe Jefferson, 
G. V. Brooke, Charles Kean, Edwin Booth, Ristori, 
Anna Bishop, Kate Haynes, Mrs. Scott-Siddons, 
lima di Murska, Camilla Urso, Wilhelmj, and 
many others ; but lately it has taken to strange 
freaks, and fancies it will treat with perfect in- 
difference men of established European reputa- 
tions, and takes a mad delight in charlatanism. 
Thus, Mr. Henry Ketten, who was certainly not a 
great pianist according to European opinions, 
was adored all over Australia and made a fortune, 
while Wilhelmj was a decided failure and lost 
money. 

The cause of this is easily understood when we 
compare the Australians of former years with the 



10 AN^ ACTOIi'S TOUR. 

Australians of to-day — " colonials," as they like 
to call themselves. Formerly, Australian senti- 
ment and public opinion were a mixture of the 
best English, German, and American ideas, and 
the country was peopled by those who retained 
the good, solid tagtes of the homes they had left ; 
by those who really loved the beautiful and sub- 
lime in art, and readily supported those capable 
of representing these, and that with a generosity 
and hospitality that made the artist's life more a 
pleasure than a labor ; but these men have gradu- 
ally disappeared from the scene, and their chil- 
dren, the so-called " colonials," have stepped into 
their shoes. 

As an evidence of the love for the drama in 
Australia formerly, I may mention the following, 
which occurred during my first visit. Charles 
Mathews, the matchless comedian, who was then 
in the country, was announced on one occasion to 
play in a small town, and, being prevented by 
floods from getting there in time, he arrived at 
nine o'clock in the evening to find that the 
citizens (who had assembled at the theatre at 
half-past seven, and waited about the place 
for over an hour) had retired in disgust, or 
at least great disappointment, to the bosom 
of their families, and not a few of them to 
their virtuous couches, indifferent alike to the 
pleasures and cares of the world. Now, Mathews 
was announced to play in another town on 
the following day, and had, therefore, either to 



yE W so UTU WALES. — iS YDNEY. 11 

skip this town, or to play in spite of Morpheus. 
The first he did not wish to do, for he sincerely 
respected the people of the place, and was the very 
last man in the world to voluntarily disappoint an 
audience or to fail in an engagement; while he 
was equally wishful not to break the continuity 
and order of the remaining arrangements of his 
tour by staying in the place more than one night. 
He resolved, therefore, to send the bellman round 
the town to announce his arrival by loud ringing 
of bells and a few oracular words such as a bell- 
man delights to utter ; and even got the band to 
make the circuit of the streets. Need I say that 
by those means he actually got the people out of 
their beds and to the theatre, which was crowded 
to suffocation before ten o'clock ? 

Now, all is changed or changing, and I am 
sorry to say that I cannot appreciate the 
" colonials " of to-day : neither their taste in 
art, nor their sentiments in life. I will not ven- 
ture a criticism upon the race, but I fear it will 
not be a great one, except circumstances should 
arise to materially alter their mode of education 
and general principles. The bishop of Melbourne, 
in one of his lectures before the Young Men's 
Christian Association, observed that the character 
of the colonial youth is " superficiality of feeling, 
crafty cunning, sharpness, and irreverence " ; and 
I agree with him m toto. Of late years a class 
of vampires has crept up, which is known in that 
country as the " larikans.'' They are perhaps 



12 AX ACTOE'S TOUB. 

better described in this country as the "hudlums," 
and yet that word is only a weak designation of 
these low creatures. One can tell a "liudluni" a 
mile off: his character is stamped Cain-like upon 
his brow ; but it is quite different with a " lari- 
kan": he is a man who imitates the gentleman, 
wears kid gloves, a spotless white cravat, and 
has a flower of the rarest kind in his buttonhole ; 
and, withal, would think it a great lark to 
waylay a child or knock down a centenarian. 
In short, a race has risen that knows nothing 
of the ideals of its forefathers in Art, character, 
conduct ; which has no true, strong manhood ; 
and hence the decline of the drama in its loftier 
aspects, the increasing demand for sensational 
amusements ; for, in brief, all performances which 
please the eye, work upon the senses, but do not 
move the heart, exalt the character, or inform the 
mind. 

In all this there is a marked contrast in the 
people of New Zealand and Tasmania, as I shall 
more fully point out later ; the people of these 
countries are just as opposite in their feelings 
and tastes to the people of Australia as light to 
darkness. The reason is this : these are younger 
countries, and those who are settled in them still 
have living memories of the lands they have left ; 
and, further, they are principally peopled by 
Scotchmen, whose love of Shakespeare and the 
sublimities of the drama is inherent and abiding. 
Having ])roduced a Burns, they know how to 



XEW SO urn wales. — ^ ydxey. 13 

appreciate a Shakespeare. I was fortunate, how- 
ever, in finding some of the good old colonial race 
still living, and I was received with great hospi- 
tality and cordiality hy my old Sydney friends, 
both on and off the stage. I })layed one month at 
the Opera House, ruiniin^ Hamlet a fortnight, and 
then the rest of my rSj^ertoire, giving several niglits 
to Othello. In the early days of Sydney theatri- 
cals there were two tragedians of whom they tell 
the following story. One of them had a wife of 
whom he was jealous, and used to address her at 
times in a manner tlie reverse of affectionate. The 
performance in wliich they were engaged was 
Othello, and before the third act began the wife 
of the actor had caused once more his displeasure, 
and there was a quarrel ; so the other actor, who 
played lago, interfei-ed, and told Othello that he 
should speak more respectfully to his wife. 

" What 's that your business ? "' 

"I choose to make it so !" 

" You do, do you? Look here '* — 

" Your cue, gentlemen ! " cried the call-boy. 

The two actors rushed on the stage, and after 
the exit of Desdemona, which part was imper- 
sonated on the occasion by tlie object of their 
dispute, the following scene took place : — 

Othello. — "• Excellent Avretch (^aside, io luf/o, 
curse you ) ! Perdition catch my soul, but T 
do {aside, hate you ! ) love thee ! and when I 
love thee not {aside, d — n you!). Chaos is come 
agfain." 



14 AN AGTOB'S TOUE. 

Iago (who overheard all). — " My noble lord 
(aside^ to him — beast ! ) " — 

Othello. — " Vv^hat dost thou say, Iago (aside, 
to him — blackguard ) ? " 

Iago. — (Aside, "If you call me blackguard 
again, I '11 hit you.") (Aloud'), " Did Michael 
Cassio, when you woo'd my lady" — 

(Othello muttered, during lago's speech, 
" How dare you interfere in my family affairs, 
you scoundrel?") 

Iago. — (Aside, to him, " Another word and I '11 
smack your face.") (Aloud), " Know of your 
love?" 

Othello. — " He did, from first to last : Why 
dost thou ask ? " 

Iago. — " But for a satisfaction of my thought ; 
no further " — 

But, alas ! before Iago could finish the sentence 
with " harm," Othello had again ejaculated 
some disrespectful words, and lago's hand without 
further hesitation came in contact with Othello's 
face, and Othello's dignity being offended he re- 
turned the blow. This peculiar behavior on the 
part of the two actors of course aroused the 
audience to take part in the dispute, and " Go it, 
Othello ! " came from a dozen voices, while " Cheer 
up, Iago ! " was shouted by a dozen others ; and 
this encouragement, which never fails to influence 
men whose " angry passions rise," seemed to have 
acted on the combatants like oil on coals of fire, 
for soon they rolled down the stage into the 



NEW SOUTH WjiLES. — SYDNEY. 15 

orchestra, smashing by their fall the big drum and 
causing considerable consternation amongst the 
musicians and their instruments ; till at last they 
were parted by the superior strength of the con- 
ductor, assisted by several others, and the shouts 
and laughter of the audience made an end of the 
play. This was, perhaps, the first and only 
occasion, in the history of the drama, on which 
lago protected the wife of Othello instead of 
calumniating her ; and, as a reading of the play, 
it cannot be considered an improvement, even 
though our sympathies may wholly be with 
Desdemona. 

In society I met my friend Justice Wyndier, 
who was but a struggling barrister when I was in 
Sydney in 1870, but who now is considered the 
strongest and most eminent judge in Australia. 
The juries love him: the criminals fear and hate 
him: no bad test of a judge's capacity. It is an 
actual fact that in circuits where Judge Wyndier 
presides he generally frees the country for years 
to come from vice and crime. 

Legal engagements do not exclusively occupy 
his attention ; he is one of the best Shakespearean 
scholars in Australia, and, as might be supposed, 
I had additional pleasure in meeting him from this 
fact. He never misses a good performance, and 
has the highest intellectual pleasure in observing 
a new reading of a great dramatic conception or 
the effort on an actor's part to reach a lofty ideal. 
He has often told me that he has learned a great 



16 AN ACTORS TOUR. 

deal from fiction, and by a constant study gained 
from it considerable advantage and much assistance 
in his profession, for it has immensely increased 
his knowledge of mankind. 

I recall one circumstance that he related to me 
bearing on this point, and showing how in real 
life it is, as we so often find it related in fiction, 
that many considerable, and even momentous, 
issues turn on some small thing, the thing that 
common minds do not observe, but which never 
escapes the all-searching vision of the true student, 
poet, or philosopher, of humanity. 

On one occasion, when on one of his circuits, 
he saw a prisoner leaving the dock who had been 
indicted by the grand jury, and was to be tried the 
following session. The man's face made a strange 
impression on him : it seemed an embodiment of 
all brutal passions. However, business was press- 
ing, and, without asking or knowing what the man 
had been committed for, he turned to it and 
thought no more of him. The next session his 
brother judge changed circuits with him, and it 
was the session following when he again presided, 
and this very criminal was brought before him. 
The jury, at the first trial before his brother 
judge, could not agree, and so a new trial had 
now to take place. In this trial Judge Wyndier 
brought out the guilt of the man (who had killed 
his benefactor in the bush for a few miserable 
pounds) so clearly and convincingly that the jury 
found him guilty without leaving the box, and he 



NEW so UTII WALES. — S YDNE Y. 1 7 



confessed his crime in toto before execution. 
One important point Judge Wyndier observed 
was that the murderer did not ask a certain 
witness, whose evidence was most important, any 
questions. So at hist he insisted that he shoukl 
speak to him, and ask him why he did not recog- 
nize him at the former triaL The prisoner did so, 
and the witness said : " Because you declined to 
ask me any questions, and I now recognize you fully 
by your voice." The judge had had this impression 
all along, and the witness, without knoAviug it, 
hit upon the judge's device. 

Another prominent citizen of Sydney, whose 
name will be handed down to posterity in the 
history of the development of the Australian 
colonies during this century, is my friend, Edward 
Greville, who has honorably served liis country as 
a member of the New South Wales parliament for 
over fifteen years. He was the first to introduce 
telegraphy into the country, and his energy and 
enterprise were unresting till every nook and 
corner of the Australasias was brought, by this 
means, within the circle of the civilized world ; 
and traveling through the country has led me to 
entertain the opinion that in not a few cases — 
so perfect are the telegraphic arrangements, and 
so moderate the rates — the news of many 
European and American affairs is fully known 
throughout the length and breadth of these 
colonies before the merest tidings have reached 
certain rural districts of England, Scotland, o: 



IS AN AC TOE'S TOUR. 

Germany. Messages can be sent to any place 
within the bounds of Victoria, New South Wales, 
Queensland, or New Zealand, for twenty-five, 
from one colony to another for fifty, and a cable- 
gram to Tasmania for seventy-five, cents. 

Sydney, as a city, deserves much praise ; it has, 
more than any other city in the Australian colonies, 
an old-world look, which at once opens the heart 
of the traveler to it; and though, from what I 
have said, it will be seen that it is not an El 
Dorado for actors, it is impossible to overlook, or 
not to be moved by, its many natural beauties and 
the grandeur of its situation. The harbor of the 
city has, and deservedly, a world-wide reputation : 
it is a question if there is more than one other 
equal to it. But even if the rest of the world 
were not aware of the fact, the Sidonians take 
good care that everybody who visits their shores 
shall be awakened to a consciousness of its superb 
beauty; consequently the questions first put to you 
when you speak to any one are : " Have you seen 
our harbor? and what do you think of it?" The 
crew of a man-of-war that lately anchored in its 
beautiful waters, having heard of the inquisitiveness 
of the people, and being anxious to please them 
all, hit upon the following plan. They attached 
a board to each side of the warrior-vessel, upon 
which they inscribed the following : " We have 
seen your harbor, and we think it sublime." The 
view as one steams into Port Jackson can never 
be forgotten by the traveler; the distance from 



NEW so UTH WALES. — S YDNE Y. 1 9 

the entrance to the city is over twelve miles, and 
the spectacle is beautiful from whatever point one 
views it. It is remarkable in this, that all along 
are little bays that retreat from the main body of 
the water, which add in a marvelous way to the 
charms of the general impression, and offer im- 
mense facilities for growing traffic. The largest 
ship can moor alongside the docks of Sydney ; and 
it is no exaggeration to say that the entire fleets 
of the civilized world could lie within the waters 
of this splendid harbor. The city is spread out 
over low hills at the upper end, and presents a 
striking contrast to what have been well described 
" the prosaic and painfully systematic cities of new 
countries." Its irregularity reminds one of Boston, 
and many of the more ancient towns of England 
and the continent. In the city itself there is 
nothing of great interest except the Public Gardens. 
Sydney, like most of the Australian cities, has 
most lovely gardens, laid out with scrupulous 
taste and wisely kept. In the suburbs, too, 
there are beautiful drives, and splendid private 
residences scattered all along the banks of the 
harbor ; the wealthy Sidonians spend their da3^s 
in truly idyllic scenes, and nowhere are there more 
stately homes than are to be found on the slopes 
of the glorious harbor. The chief places of 
interest in the neighborhood that invite a visit 
from tlie traveler are Hawkesbury River and 
the Blue Mountains : though, as a German, 
I may perhaps be forgiven for expressing 



20 AyAGTOB'iS TOUB. 

a more moderate opinion of the former than 
Anthony Trollope, who said it is superior to 
the Rhine, and has in the way of natural beauties 
"nothing equal to it, nothing second to it." I 
admit it is a scene of great beauty. Lovet's Leap, 
in the Blue Mountains, is one of the most entirely 
desolate and awful pieces of scenery in the world. 
It is said to have no true story about it, though its 
appearance is such as to suggest a dozen tragedies 
to one's thoughts and imagination, and it is hard 
to convince one's mind that they may not have 
happened, for it seems so pre-eminently a place 
that may have witnessed deeds of darkness ; 
however, it is said simply to owe this designa- 
tion to a surveyor of the name who inscribed it 
so on his map of the district. 



CHAPTER IL — Australia. 

QUEENSLAND. — BRISBANE. 

" Thus far into the bowels of the land 
Have we march'd on without impediment." 

— Richard III, Act. v, sc. 2. 

Privileges of the theatrical pi-ofession — A story of the colonial 
bishops — The city — The Bank Buildings — The Brisbane Kiver — 
A magnificent engagement — The climate — The houses — Storms — 
Moreton Bay — Stranded — Sand-sailing — Sharks — A boy's hero- 
ism — Goulburn — Cherries ripe ! — Wagga Wagga — Albury. 

Early in November I left Sydney for Brisbane, 
for an engagement in the School of Art, the theatre 
there, also, having been burnt down. 

Brisbane is the capital of Queensland, and two 
lines of steamers run from Sydney — the Austra- 
lian Steamship Navigation Company and Messrs. 
Smith, Howard and Company. The journey takes 
from thirty-six to forty-eight hours, and the fare is 
a few pounds, while those connected with the theat- 
rical profession, I may as well say here once for 
all, have the privilege in Australia, as in most 
other countries, of traveling at reduced rates. 
There is a good story told in Australia a propos 
of this. It seems that some time ago the bishoj)S 
and archdeacons from all parts of Australia had to 
attend synod at Sydney, and one of the former, 
having an eye to economy (and perhaps the 
income of his bishopric was not more than that 



22 AN ACTOR'S TOUli. 

of a good, fat English rectory), asked the Austra- 
lian Steamship Navigation Companj^ this simple 
question : " Will you make a reduction in our 
tickets?" To this the reply came by telegraph: 
" You may be carried same as theatricals." So 
these bishops and archdeacons, no doubt dressing 
with greater care and putting on a little additional 
solemnity, — for these colonial divines are by no 
means given to solemn grimness on ordinary occa- 
sions, — availed themselves of the privilege of the 
theatrical profession and journeyed to and from 
synod at reduced rates. I have heard that it is 
said amongst the people now, when they are from 
home, that "they are on a theatrical tour," but I 
don't know how true that is ; a sly hit at ritualism 
may perhaps be intended. 

Brisbane, as a town, contains nothing of interest. 
The Bank Buildings are the finest in the j)lace, 
and the river is a rather pretty sight as it winds at 
the foot of the low hill on which the town rises. 
My visit, however, was satisfactory in every way. 
I played a magnificent engagement, and Louise 
Beaudet, who had become a great favorite in 
Sydney, and whose reputation had preceded her, 
enhanced her position considerably here. Novem-. 
ber in Brisbane is pretty hot, but what struck me 
especially was the early rising of the sun. One 
hardly can get away from that fiery, powerful 
ruler of the day during November, December, and 
January, in Queensland ; it burns and shrivels one 
up. In India the houses are built in such a 



Q UEENSLAND. — BRISBANE. 23 

manner that as soon as one gets inside the fiercest 
rays of the sun are powerless to reach or harm, 
but in Queensland the same careful precautions 
are not taken. Queensland enjoys, during eight 
months of the year, the loveliest climate imagi- 
nable ; the other four months the people suffer 
much — I must do them justice, their' suffering 
is great. The reason is, their houses are built 
for these eight delightful months, and for the 
rest they do the best they can. I have, in all 
my travels, never known what liglitning and 
thunder were till I visited Brisbane. It is 
nothing rare to see a cabman fall from his seat 
struck by lightning, and the horse, with cab and 
occupant, going on a spree all by itself, till some 
courageous passer-by stops it. Horses don't like 
lightning and thunder, but in Brisbane they seem 
prepared for all sorts of eventualities. The rain 
falls in marvelous torrents, and the atmosphere 
after one of these storms is extremely refreshing. 
During my stay in Brisbane a very touching 
incident happened worth recording. The city 
lies near the river forty miles from Moreton Bay, 
which has two outlets, ten miles distant from each 
other, one on each side ; there are high and low 
tides, and ships of a certain tonnage must catch 
the high tide, or they strand. Stranding is not 
dangerous, but rather unpleasant. Our captain, 
anxious to get his vessel into the river in time, 
forced his speed in hope to catch the tide, Init 
unfortunately he was too late, and we stuck in the 



24 AN AGTOB'8 TOUB. 

sand of the bay and had to wait for the next tide. 
This was my first experience of sand-sailing and I 
don't want another. The river is about a quarter 
of a mile wide, and is infested with sharks, and 
some say crocodiles, which have been seen to swim 
across the river and disajDpear. Yet, in spite of 
the interdict of the government, persons, espec- 
ially boys, will batlie in its dangerous waters. On 
one occasion a party of boys bathed along the 
bank at the foot of a hill on the top of which the 
house of a Mr. Drury, a prominent citizen, is 
located. Suddenly the boys on the shore heard 
their friend, young Drury, a lad of about twelve 
years of age shriek, " A shark ! " Rushing to the 
river's edge they saw to their amazement two 
sharks after young Drury, who was fighting them 
as he swam toward the shore. Quick as thought 
one of the boys, about ten years of age, sprang 
into the water to his friend's assistance, and 
succeeded after much effort in getting him near 
to the land, but they had not quite reached it 
when he saw one of the monsters turn fiercely 
toward his friend. He struck out with all his force 
and gave the monster a powerful blow — then in 
another instant both the boys were on shore. But 
when on shore the boys saw to their horror that 
the entire right side of young Drury had been 
literally stripped. The father was sent for, and on 
his arrival the boy said : " Oh, papa, dear, don't 
scold me, I could n't lielj) it. It was not my fault. 
Don't tell mother." The doctor was sent for, who 



QUEENSLAND. — BRISBANE. 25 

consulted with some of his confreres. Amputa- 
tion was inevitable, and need I say that the sweet 
boy did not survive it ? The boy who showed such 
marvelous courage as to jump into the water to 
rescue his friend was interviewed by a reporter, 
and when he had finished, the brave boy said: 

" I say, Mr. , you 're not a newspaper chap, 

I hope, who will put that stuff in the daily. 
Now, don't do that : I don't want anything of the 
sort: the one thing I wanted was to save poor 
Drury ; but, alas ! he 's dead and if my dad hears 
about it, he '11 give me a thundering whipping." 
Surely this is the stuff heroes are made of. 

From Brisbane I returned to Sydney; thence 
overland to Melbourne. One night I gave dra- 
matic readings in a little town called Goulburn, 
which is surrounded by beautiful gardens and 
farms. The hall was packed and the audience 
greatly delighted with the performance. During 
the day we went to an orchard in the neighbor- 
hood, where we feasted ourselves on the most 
delicious European cherries of all dimensions, 
flavors, and colors, gathered fresh by our own 
hands from the trees. We tried to j)ay liberally 
for our pleasure, but I am sure we never could 
pay sufficiently for the quantity of delicious fruit 
we consumed that day ; for once we felt we had 
feasted with the gods. 

From Goulburn we went to Wagga Wagga, 
made famous by the Claimant, a thriving little 
town, where they now have a beautiful theatre. 



26 AX AC'TOB\S TOUB. 

Then on to Albury, where we saw the vineyards, 
and which is the line of demarcation between 
New South Wales and Victoria. On my arrival at 
Melbourne I at once considerably supplemented 
my company to travel through New Zealand, a 
country which I had not seen and was anxious 
to visit. 



CHAPTER III. — New Zealand. 

SOUTH ISLAND. — DUNEDIN. — CHRISTCHURCH. 

" Good things should be praised." 

— Thvo Gentlemen of Verona, Act. iii, sc. 1. 
" Pleasure and action make the liours seem short." 

— Othello, Act a, sc. 3. 

The Bluflf — New Zealand ports — Invercarglll — Duuedin, the queen of 
New Zealand cities — The Scotch — Port Chalmers — Two systems 
of railroad — The city buildings — The situation — Farming in 
Otago — Frozen meat — Mountain scenery — Tlie roads — Convict- 
laborers — A convict-artist — The waterworks — Driulung-f ount- 
ains — The suburbs — Heresy aud orthodoxy — A grim bishop — 
Dr. Byng aud the liberal clergy — The High School — Children at 
the theatre — Dramatic readings in the Temperance Hall — Shake- 
speare in English, German, and French — Speeches — " Blue-fire " — 
"The ghost began to cough!" — The hotels — Means of transit- 
Horse-breeding — Daily papers — Professor Alexander AVilson — 
A great success — Farewell to Duuedin — Timaru — Christchurch — 
Public buildings -The spirit of the place — Orthodox i-eligiosity 
and Art — The Honorable Mr. Romilly — The climate — The only 
natural attrac-tion — The Public Gardens — The Museum — The 
moa — Lyttelton — The Canterbury plains. 

I LEFT Melbourne in December by the Union 
Line in the steamship Rotomahana, a vessel which 
can run sixteen knots an hour, and which makes 
the distance between Melbourne and the Bluff, 
the first point in New Zealand, in less than three 
days. Vessels run twice a week, and the Union 
Line has a powerful fleet of between twenty 
and thirty vessels. They make what is called the 
" round trip," leaving Melbourne direct for the 
Bluff, which is a small port at the extreme south 
of New Zealand, where they remain all day in the 



28 AN' ACT01i\S TOUR. 

harbor and start at night for the next port. The 
ports they touch are as follows : Port Chalmers, 
for Duneclin ; Port Lyttelton, for Christchurch ; 
Wellington, Napier, Gisbourn, Auckland, then to 
Sydney, which takes three days and a half. The 
return journey is made along the entire line of 
New Zealand ports to Melbourne. On the west 
side of North Island commencing with Welling- 
ton there is a smoother sea, and a steady com- 
munication with Picton, Nelson, New Plymouth, 
and the Bay of Auckland ; there is also communi- 
cation to the western parts of South Island, 
including Greymouth. From Sydney there are 
direct steamers running to Wellington, and to 
the ports on the west coast of South Island. 
The round trip from Melbourne to Auckland 
costs fourteen pounds ; to Sydney, twenty pounds; 
to intermediate places, according to distance. 

I arrived on Sunday afternoon, December 17, 
at the Bluff, and left with my company completely 
organized for this special trip through New Zea- 
land early the next day. The point we made for 
first was Invercargill, a small town, populated 
principally by Scotchmen. The principal occupa- 
tion of the people is farming ; they live and often 
grow rich by the produce of the land. The 
town has no great attractions : indeed, the only 
marked feature it seems to have is that it always 
rains there, or, if by any chance it stops, it blows 
terribly. The town has two theatres, but the 
people are exceptionally slow and sluggish for 



so UTH ISLAND. — D UNEDm. — E TC. 29 

Scotchiiien. I played five nights so as to rehearse 
some of my pieces, and then took my company to 
the queen of New Zealand cities — Dunedin. I 
can hardly speak too well of this beautiful, gener- 
ous, and hospitable town. Commercially it is the 
most important city of New Zealand, and has a 
population of nearly fifty thousand, chiefly Scotch- 
men. No city in the world reflects more credit on 
the enterprise, capacity, and perseverance of the 
Scotch race. Its harbor, Port Chalmers, is very 
fine : indeed, no fact impresses the traveler in New 
Zealand more than the number of good harbors it 
possesses. From Dunedin there are two complete 
systems of railroad : one extending south to the 
Bluff; the other to the capital of South Island — 
Christchurch. The buildings of this city are the 
finest in the colony. The city stands on the top 
of a hill, and is surrounded for many miles by the 
most fertile tableland in the world. 

The farmers of Otago are the richest in the 
colony, and in recent years many new industries 
have sprung up, and now other produce finds its 
way into the world's markets besides wheat, hides, 
wool, and canned beef, namely, frozen meat, which, 
in refrigerators, is sent out to England by sailing- 
vessels and steamers. The profit arising from this 
new trade is enormous and is doing much to revive 
Otago from the commercial depression of the last 
few years. There are districts of country near 
Dunedin equal in beauty to the most beautiful 
mountain-land in Bavaria, Scotland, or Switzer- 



30 AK AGTOE'8 TOUR. 

land, especially the fourteen miles' drive over the 
" Blue Skin " road, named after a famous Maori 
chief, or because the tips of the mountains are 
generally blue. The roads all over New Zealand 
are in perfect order, and can only be compared 
with the celebrated shell-road of Mobile. 

The reason of this is, New Zealand utilizes 
its criminals for making roads, wharfs, and for 
building public institutions. These unfortunate 
men are to be seen in all directions where public 
works are progressing, and it is wonderful to see 
their perfect state of health and vigor. The 
motley dress is the only indication of their state ; 
the same may be said of criminals in Tasmania 
and in the Hawaiian Islands, for these are follow- 
ing the example of New Zealand in compelling 
those whose crimes have rendered them outcasts 
of society to work for the public benefit. 

As I looked on these men at their work they 
reminded me very much of the convicts of the 
state-prison of Kingston, in Canada, where I was 
greatly struck with the humanity of their treat- 
ment. What different treatment this ! and how 
much more likely to result in what should be the 
real end of all punishment, namely, the reformar 
tion of the criminal, from that I witnessed on a 
visit to a Melbourne prison, where I saw hundreds 
of poor wretches sitting in rows in a large open 
space securely walled in, and protected by armed 
wardens, before immense piles of stones, breaking 
them into pieces in solitude ; the terrible silence 



so UTII ISLAND. — D UNEDIN. — ETC. 31 

only broken by the sound of a hundred hammers 
or by the meal-bell. I spoke to one of these 
unfortunate fellows in Melbourne, wlio was per- 
mitted to come out of the ranks to see a 
gentleman whom I accompanied on my visit 

to the prison. He was a Mr. , who had 

been a cashier in one of the Melbourne banks, 
and a great swell in the society of the place. 
He had embezzled many thousands of pounds, 
but returned most of the money as a repentant^ 
by reason of which he got only seven years. 
When we saw him, he was breaking stones like 
the rest, and I could not help feeling pity for him. 
I asked him : " How do you like it ? " He simply 
said : " I have to do it, whether I like it or not." 
Still, I could not keep back the thought that the 
method of punishment that consigns a man of this 
stamp to stone-breaking, ignoring altogether his 
aptitudes and talents for higher labor, which 
utilized might be much more profitable to society, 
is itself a criminal act on the part of the legisla- 
ture of the country, and needs reformation no less 
than those for whose punishment it is designed. 
The sheriff told me that this man was an excellent 
worker, and that he was always aliead of the 
others in getting through his allotted task. 

In the same prison the governor showed me some 
of the most exquisite pen-and-ink sketches that 
I have ever seen, done by a German who had 
been committed for forgery. These were chiefly 
copies of celebrated pictures, both landscape and 



32 A y A CTOIt' 8 TOUB. 

portraiture. The governor and his family, feeling 
pity for a man so highly gifted and brought so 
low by his folly and crime, and respect for his 
remarkable talents, tried in every way to reclaim 
him and to plant in his heart true moral princi- 
ples. He was treated with special care, and taken 
into the governor's own service in the capacity 
of clerk. He soon got his punishment reduced, 
and rejoiced over his success. "Now you have 
a new chance, my friend," said the governor, " and 
may the protection of God be over you, and may 
I never see you again except as a friendly visitor. 
Here is an extra five pounds for you. Take care 
not to enter bad company ; keep away from vice. 
Good-by." Like timely advice gave the gov- 
ernor's worthy wife, as she, too, said " Good-by " ; 
while even the governor's children, who had come 
to find marvelous pleasure in the man's "ink- 
paintings," as they called them, raised their young 
voices high, crying, " Good-by, good-by ! " as the 
grateful artist passed away through the prison 
gates. Would he be strong? would he stand that 
fearful trial a man has to stand who once more 
faces the world from a term of prison-life ? For 
a month all went well ; but then he was back 
at the prison again, not as a friendly visitor, but 
sentenced to a heavier punishment and for a 
longer period than before, and for a like offence. 
The governor feared he would have to look upon 
him as a perpetual lodger. 

"What fools these mortals he!" 



so UTH ISLAND. — D UNEDIN. — E TC. 3:5 

The waterworks at Dunedin are so arranged as, 
perhaps, to be the most lovely and refreshing in 
the world. They are a marvel of taste, and imply 
the highest sense of the beautiful, allied with per- 
fect design, in a matter of great use and importance 
to a populous city. Here is a long, winding road, 
by the side of wliich a rivulet of clear water runs, 
either gently sloping bank being ornamented with 
ferns, for which New Zealand is celebrated — ferns 
of all dimensions, from a few inches to twelve, 
and in some instances fifteen, feet in height. The 
road rises to an elevation of about five hundred 
feet, and all the way along the rivulet makes 
a quiet, sweet music as it glides down over 
the stones, till, when you reach the top of 
the hill, there are two large basins, in circum- 
ference about a mile, around which there are 
lovely walks, most comfortable seats placed 
every hundred yards, and drinking-fountains for 
refreshment. I have been in many waterilig- 
places in Europe, and have, seen most towns that 
lay themselves out to catch the summer pleasure- 
seekers, but nowhere else have I been so impressed 
by the perfect fitness, harmony, and beauty of the 
arrangements, both for the healthful and for the 
health-seeking invalid. I think it is Raskin who 
has said that a people's reverence is never more 
seen than in the care and respect they pay to 
Nature's fountains — the sweet, pure springs she 
opens for man's need, joy, and refreshment among 
the hills of every land. New Zealand, in tliis 



34 AN^ ACTOR'S TOUIi. 

respect, deserves the highest praise of all countries 
I have visited, for, go where you will throughout 
its cities and towns, you find this care taken, to 
save from pollution, and to give a fitting and 
beautiful home and appointed place to, that pure 
stream that brings gladness and refreshment, but 
no pain and misery, to man. The care shown in 
this respect gives one, on entering any New Zea- 
land city, the impression of a perfect hospitality, 
the like of which I have never felt anywhere else. 
The people seem to have grasped the great truth 
of charity which the world's great Master and 
Teacher has enshrined forever under the image 
of " a cup of cold water." 

The New Zealanders are, perhaps, the heaviest- 
taxed people in the world, but also among the 
most generous and hospitable. 

There is another beautiful outskirt to this 
lovely town, stretching to the sea about a mile and 
a half from the city, where, especially on a Sunday 
or on a public holiday, thousands of people go 
seeking health and pleasure on its smooth, sandy 
shore. It is in fact a lesser Brighton, Margate, or 
Yarmouth, and reminds one much of these as one 
sees so many hundreds of happy children building 
sand-castles along its beach or deliciously paddling 
in the merry waves. 

As extremes generally meet, so Dunedin is the 
centre of free-religious thought and of episcopal 
orthodoxy in the Australasias. The head and 
front of the former is represented in a Mr. Stout, 



so UTH ISLAND. — D UNEDIX. — E T(J. 35 

who is considered one of the ablest lawyers in the 
country, and who, with others earnest in modern 
religious liberalism, gives, every Sunday evening, 
lectures to crowded audiences in the L3xeum, and 
encourages the people in their love of intellectual 
and religious freedom, science, art, and the drama ; 
while the latter is represented by the lean and 
hungry bishop of the Episcopal Church, struck 
with miscalled holy horror at the bare thought 
of amusement and the stage. 

But there are many happy exceptions to this 
type of divine amongst the clergy of the city : 
one especially, the Reverend Dr. Byng. This 
distinguished clergyman encourages the people to 
uphold everything in the way of beauty, art, and 
the drama, of a legitimate character. He treated 
me with great kindness during my stay, coming 
to most of my performances; and on several 
occasions I had the pleasure of dining with him. 
He is the minister of the most influential church 
in the city, and in the strongest way urged his 
people to give us an earnest support. Wellnigh 
the whole clergy of the Episcopal Church did the 
same, notwithstanding the grim bishop at their 
head, and it was no uncommon sight to see a 
dozen clergymen at a time occupying stalls. On 
one occasion, when I gave a reading, in grateful 
acknowledgment of the great public support I had 
received, at the High School, before five hundred 
scholars and masters, the platform was crowded 
with ministers of every denomination, and the chair 



36 AN ACTOR'S TOUB. 

was occupied by the Reverend. Dr. Steward, one 
of the leading divines of the Presbyterian Church. 

On anotlier occasion I allowed all the children 
who could show a certificate of good behavior a 
free-pass into the theatre if they were accompanied 
by their parents, and the success was so great that 
I had to repeat the experiment. It was done from 
my sympathy with the children in their studies, 
for I have an infinite pleasure in the joy, wellbeing, 
and progress of the little ones who fill our homes 
with such sweet laughter and teach us the unselfish- 
ness of love ; and also as a compliment to their 
parents. It must not be supposed, however, that 
the New Zealander is mean and cares much for a. 
free-pass for his child: none are more generous 
than he. But I never witnessed more real enthu- 
siasm than in these sweet, happy children, during 
the evenings in v/hich they crowded the theatre. 
The play was Hamlet, which took immensely in 
Dunedin. 

On the afternoon of January 18, I also gave a 
series of dramatic readings in the Temperance 
Hall for the benefit of the teachers and pupils of 
the public schools. Mr. Robin, chairman of the 
Dunedin school committee; Dr. MacDonald, rec- 
tor of the High School ; the Reverend Dr. Byng, 
and other distinguished men, were on the platform ; 
while in the body of the hall there were several 
members of the synod, and the Reverend Fathers 
Walsh and Nieuport. The readings included 
Hood's Dream of Eugene Aram, Marc Antony's 



so UTII ISLAND. — D UXEDIX. — E TG. 37 

oration from Julius Ca3sar, Shylock's speech from 
The Merchant of Venice ; respecting the last, I 
may say, that, out of consideration for the scho- 
lastic character of my audience, and hoping to 
encourage the young people in their study of the 
modern languages, and also to show something of 
the cosmopolitan quality of Shakespeare's genius, 
and that his thoughts and ideas retain their music 
and beauty in every tongue, I recited it not only in 
English, but in German and French. I concluded 
with the trial scene from the same play. There 
was great enthusiasm, and the reception I met 
with was gratifying in every way. At the con- 
clusion, Dr. MacDonald, rector of the High 
School, rose and said : — 

"I move a vote of sincere thanks to Mr. 
Bandmann for tlie reading which he has given 
this afternoon. I am certain that I can assure 
him in your name that it is with exquisite 
intellectual pleasure we have heard some of 
the noblest passages from the literature of our 
own country powerfully interpreted to us by a 
master of the dramatic art — one who is eminent 
in action, gesture, and utterance. There is another 
way in which we can return him our thanks. In 
our schoolwork, reading intelligibly possesses an 
educational value of a high order ; but it is also 
true that, in the multiplicity of competing sub- 
jects in our schools, this important art of reading 
does not receive that amount of cultivation which 
it evidently deserves. We shall take care to 



38 AN AC TOE'S TOUB. 

return our thanks to him by further attention 
on the part of those who have distinguished 
themselves by devotion to the cultivation of this 
subject. I ask this meeting to thank Mr. 
Bandmann for his graceful courtesy in coming 
forward this afternoon to give us these beautiful 
readings." 

To this neat little speech I made the following 
reply : — 

" Mr. Chairman., Ladies and Cientlemen, — You 
have taken me by great surprise, for I am 
not a speaker, and was not prepared to hear so 
many kind utterances on my behalf. Had it been 
otherwise I perhaps should have done — what 
we actors have to do — namely, studied my part ; 
but I hope you will take the few words which I 
have to say for what they are really worth. I can 
assure you that they come from my heart. I 
thank you sincerely for the many kind things you 
have said of me. As to my comiug before you 
to give a reading, I can assure you that it gives 
me great pleasure to find that it has given you 
pleasure. If my humble efforts will lead to 
greater attention in the utterance of speech, I shall 
be very proud of it. I am glad to hear the 
rector recognize that elocution is defective, not 
only in your town, but all over the world. I do 
not know why that should be the case. It seems 
as if language were written and read, but not 
spoken. One of our principal professors said 
as much, years ago. He said : ' Speak as you 



so UTIl ISLAND. — D UN ED IN. — E Tf. 'd'd 

write , but do not write as you speak.' There 
is a great deal of meaning in that. It is as a great 
author once told me was the case with the English 
language: 'You sj^ell it donkey, and pronounce 
it ass.' The English language is very arbitrary ; 
we all know that. The German languase is not 
so, but a regular one, yet with my countrymen 
every few miles you find a different patois. The 
most educated people speak bad grammar, while 
they write the language perfectly. So it is not 
only in your country that sufficient stress is not 
laid upon the art of elocution. It is different 
with Frenchmen, for they care much more for 
refinement and finish of speech. No one in France 
is considered an educated man unless he speaks 
accurately. That is not so in other countries. 
I have heard educated people speak the most 
dreadful dialect, and yet they would write most 
elegantly. I can assure you that elocution is a 
great art, and is not one easy to learn. It is a 
child which requires to be fostered and nursed, 
and if attention is not given to it in the days 
(if childhood, and to what is said from morning 
till evening, a habit of indifference is acquired, 
and when we are older it takes many years of 
hard work to do what might have been accom- 
plished in a few years in early life. I have 
given this afternoon's reading with the greatest 
pleasure, and I feel great satisfaction at seeing 
so many children around me. If they have 
enjoyed themselves I am thoroughly rewarded." 



40 AN ACTOB'S TOUB. 

Both of the foregoing are taken from the 
Duneclm Morning Herald of January 19, 1881, 
as I have no other record of them, though a 
much fuller report of Dr. Ma'cDonald's speech 
was given in some of the papers. 

I stayed over two months in Dunedin, and 
played my own and Louise Beaudet's entire 
repertoire. I had to repeat Hamlet fourteen 
times, it was in such favor with the Dunedin 
public. One evening the property-man, whose 
duty it was to get a proper blue-light for the 
appearance of the ghost, being unable to pro- 
cure the lime-light, made up the deficiency Avith 
blue-fire ; but the druggist, who had told him that 
it would neither produce smell nor smoke, had 
very much deceived him, for, of all the foul, offen- 
sive, mephitic stenches that might accompany a 
ghost from the unseen world, that was surely the 
worst. As Falstaff says, "there was the rankest 
compound of villainous smell that ever offended 
nostril." That night, I think, the audience must 
have imagined that a whole world of lost spirits 
was playing a prank with them. But, oh, misery ! 
it did not end there, for, strange to say, the ghost 
began to cough ! then Hamlet, then every one at 
the back of the stage, then the entire audience in 
front of the stage, and when finally the curtain 
dropped, there was the most perfect oratorio of 
coughing ever heard inside a theatre, accompajiied 
by such a rushing to the windows and doors and 
general stampede as wellnigh threatened to ruin 



so UTH ISLAND. — D UNEDIN. — E TO. 41 

the entire play. But I was not altogether without 
presence of mind. I immediately sent for my agent, 
who was trying to pacify the crowded house, and 
bade him buy twenty pounds of bronchial troches, 
and to send four girls with trays of these through 
the entire house, with my compliments. The 
audience laughed and accepted the remed)' good- 
naturedly, and although an occasional cough was 
heard here and there from an oversensitive 
throat, the performance was finished, as usual, 
amid universal approbation. 

Dunedin has two theatres, each able to accom- 
modate about fifteen hundred people. It has, 
also, a magnificent public hall capable of seating 
three thousand. The hotels are conducted on the 
most approved principles, and some of them are 
very handsome buildings. The town has all the 
modern appliances of transit, such as horse and 
steam street-cars ; and it is even ahead of New 
York in one respect, for it has already adopted 
the cable system of the San Francisco street-belt- 
cars, by which means one can travel with safety 
up almost j)erpendicular hills. There is also 
a fine service of hansom-cabs, with splendid 
horses, which would be an ornament to the 
metropolis of any country. Indeed, horse-raising 
is one of the proudest occupations of New Zea- 
landers ; they supply the entire Australasias with 
most noble breeds, especially of draught-horses. 

Three good daily papers are published in the 
city : the Otago Times., the Morning Herald, an^l 
the Evening Telegraph. 



42 AN AGTOIi'S TOUE. 

The High School is an admirable institution, and 
will bear comparison with the best colleges of 
older countries. Dr. MacDonald, the rector, and 
Professor Alexander Wilson are both Edinburgh 
graduates, and thorough Shakespearean scholars. 
The latter possesses very remarkable critical fac- 
ulty, and the use to which he puts it, in endeavor- 
ing to raise the public taste, is worthy of the 
highest praise. He thus renders many kindly 
services to actors of real merit who visit the 
city, while I enjoyed the privilege of meeting 
him socially. 

But the best of friends must part, and the hour 
came when I had to say farewell to the noble, gen- 
erous, and hospitable people of Dunedin, and to 
quit their fair, beautiful city. My visit was a 
great success, for the two months of my stay 
brought me a clear profit of upward of fifteen 
hundred pounds (seventy-five hundred dollars), 
and, beyond this, there was the happiness of being 
taken to a people's heart, welcomed to their best 
society, and made glad in their joy, which consti- 
tutes the true riches of life, — of an actor's life 
no less than of others, — and will ever remain 
among my most precious memories. 

I brought my engagement to a close on the 
evening of February 26, and during an interval in 
the performance I did my best, in a little speech 
before the curtain, to acknowledge the favors I 
had received. I know that I failed, — we actors 
seldom succeed in speeches, — but, inadequate as 



so UTH ISLAND. — D UNEDIN. — E TC. 43 

it is to express the sentiments I then felt and 
still cherish for the noble Dunedin people, I will 
include it here, because everything I tried to say 
then I would like to repeat now ; but I fear my 
art has not improved in such matters. I copy it 
from a report of my last performance at the 
Queen's Theatre, which appeared in the Otago 
Times of February 27 : — 

" Ladies and Grentlemen, — There is an old 
proverb, 'When the heart is full the tongue 
runs free,' but I do not think that that proverb is 
aj)plicable to me in this present instance, for I 
assure you were I to say everything that my heart 
feels, it would take a much longer time than you 
or I have to spare this evening, for my heart is full 
of thanks and gratitude for the kind manner in 
which you have treated me. Believe me, what I 
say is sincere. There is no blarney about it. In 
fact, I should not like to be near that blarney- 
stone at present. I speak sincerely. My thanks 
— my grateful thanks — are due to you for the 
excellent manner in which you have treated me 
from the moment I put my foot on the stage in 
Dunedin. I have traveled all over the world and 
have been in many towns in Germany, England, 
America, and Australia, but I cannot mention 
a single town where I have been received with 
sincerer feeling, with more enthusiastic kindness, 
than in Dunedin. With a few exceptions my 
houses have been good ; and the honor you have 
bestowed on me great ; and the warmth and enthu- 



44 AX ACTOB'S TOUli. 

siasm displayed by you thorough and fuU-souled. 
Now, have I jiot every reason to be grateful? 
Not only on the stage, but also off the stage, I 
have been very happy. You know very well 
(this is no flattery) that your town is one of the 
most beautiful in the world. In fact, I prophesy 
that the time is not far distant when this will be 
the resort of tourists from Australia and Europe, 
who will travel to see the grandeur of the place. 
I have traveled in Italy, Switzerland, and other 
countries, but I have seen nowhere grandeur so 
beautiful as I have seen around your enlightened, 
hearty, and progressive town. I go out of this 
town well pleased. Why should I not be well 
pleased ? I go away with honor and money, 
and I have every reason to be satisfied. 

" I thank the press. I think the press has 
treated us with universal kindness. Gentlemen 
of education, scholarl}^, Shakespearean men, have 
come forward on this occasion to write, not only 
criticisms, but essays. I am proud they have done 
so. I have also to thank the company. They 
have worked very hard. When you come to con- 
sider that we have played twenty different pieces, 
I think you must believe that they have toiled 
very hard to make this season a success. Every 
one — there is not a single member of the com- 
pany who has not willingly and gladly put his 
shoulder to the wheel, to earn the patronage and 
applause of the Dunedin public. And now, ladies 
and gentlemen, it is hard to say farewell ; but 



so UTH ISLAND. — D UNEDIN. — E TC. 45 



when I come back (for I shall decidedly come 
back) I hope you will then have retained the 
same kindly feeling you have shown me on this 
occasion." 

My company and I left fair, beautiful, and 
charming Dunedin on the next day for Timaru. 
Timaru is a small, thriving town of about fifteen 
thousand inhabitants, located on the sea-coast in 
Canterbury, South Island. It is easily reached from 
Dunedin, as the railroad from the Bluff to Christ- 
church passes through Timaru. I gave a series of 
dramatic readings in the public schoolroom, at 
which Mr. R. B. Walcot, the chairman of the 
school committee, presided ; and we played four 
nights to crowded houses, at double prices, amid 
the most intense enthusiasm, and then passed on 
to Christchurch, also in Canterbury, where we 
opened the first week in March. 

Christchurch is situated on an open plain. The 
public buildings and residences are principally 
of wood. It is a cathedral city, and in appearance 
and public spirit, or rather its want of it, the 
very antithesis of Dunedin : there, everything is 
undulated, picturesque and progressive; here, 
everything is even, methodical, and more or less 
conservative. The people live in an atmosphere 
of dull, very stupid, bent-down piety, similar to 
that which characterizes the communities of the 
old cathedral towns of England, and there is a stiff- 
ness and rigidness about the place that reminds one 
especially of Lincoln, Worcester, and Gloucester ; 



46 AN ACTORS TOUB. 

together with an absolute lack of spontaneous 
enthusiasm and lively intelligence, which is at 
once noticed by any one who visits those cities. 
I don't know whether the same fact has impressed 
other travelers, but I think it must be felt by all 
observing minds, that in cathedral cities coarseness 
and vulgarity are more prominent than in others ; 
and that variety and negro shows, and exhibitions 
of monstrosities, are more popular, and find most 
favor, where orthodox religiosity is the most 
fervent. 

To a very considerable degree " this is true of 
Christchurch ; the inhabitants are formal and 
cold; they lack the fervor of the Londoner, 
the intelligence of the Scotchman. Yet the 
people seem anxious to appreciate a good perform- 
ance, and during my visit far exceeded my expec- 
tations in the support they gave me ; but, the truth 
is, they usually live under such ice-cold formalism 
and rigorous social conditions, that their minds 
have sunk into a habitual and settled dulness, 
that, do their utmost, they can't rouse tliemselves 
completely out of it without the aid of violent 
sensationalism ; and though I believe they sin- 
cerely aimed to do so, on the occasion of my 
visit, they did not succeed in reaching the stand- 
ard of the Dunedin public in sentiment and taste ; 
with whom Art is a supreme interest of life ; the 
legitimate drama an institution of daily edifica- 
tion and delight ; and the practice of hospitality 
a habit that confers an unspeakable happiness 



so UTH ISLA ND. — D UNE1)L\. — E TC. 47 

on others and gives a marvelous grace and beauty 
to those wlio cultivate it. 

But it happened that, in spite of the usual dead- 
level of the place, I did an excellent business for 
one month, and left, after paying all expenses, 
with a considerably clear profit. Socially, too, 
I had a very good time in Christchurch, for I was 
fortunate in meeting there an old friend, the 
Honorable Mr. Romilly (whose brother, Samuel 
Henry Romilly, married my friend, Lady Arabella 
Southesk), son of Lady Elizabeth Eliot, daughter 
of the Earl of Minto, and of Lieutenant-Colonel 
Frederick Romilly, who had come from Welling- 
ton on government business. 

The climate of Christchurch is everything that 
could be wished — beautiful, mild, constant. 
During the winter months New Zealand has heavy 
snowstorms and considerable frost, but Christ- 
church is generally free, even in the depth of the 
winter season, from severe w^eather, though it 
comes in for its full share of rain. 

There is one natural feature even in Christ- 
church that does much to relieve the otherwise 
monotonous pliysiognomy of the city. It is as 
though Nature, knowing hov/ dull and helpless the 
people are in themselves, had in sheer pity 
bestowed upon them one charm complete and 
beautiful, as her gifts so often are : for, running 
through the centre of the city, is a small, winding 
stream, clear and lovely, the home of innumerable 
trout and salmon ; the banks of which are surpass- 



Aisr ACTon\s touu. 



ingly charming, being lined with willows rivaling 
those that render so delightful the meadows at 
the back of the colleges at Cambridge, and the 
sight of which recalls many an English landscape. 
The Public Gardens are large and prettily laid 
out; while the Museum contains the finest collec- 
tion of Dinornis skeletons — a class of large and 
terrible extinct birds — of any museum through- 
out the world. The most famous is the moa, so 
called by the Maoris, an enormous, wingless bird, 
long extinct, but celebrated in the hunting-songs 
of that strange people ; the finest specimen is over 
twelve feet high, and its legbones exceed in size 
those of the African elephant. 

Lyttelton, the port of Christchurch, is a magni- 
ficent harbor, built at the cost of two hundred 
thousand pounds, and is connected with the city 
by a tunnel that passes through a small mountain- 
range. Lyttelton itself is a most beautiful place, 
but entirely monopolized for purposes of traffic 
and shipment. Christchurch is almost exclusively 
dependent on the agriculture of the outlying 
districts of the Canterbury i^lains, and since for 
the last few years this has not been very pros- 
perous, the city has suffered severe commercial 
depression. 



CHAPTER IV.— New Zealand. 

NORTH ISLAND. — WELLINGTON. — NAPIEE. — 

AUCKLAND. 

" Therein I spake of most disastrous chances, 
Of moving accidents, by flood and field; 
Of liairbreadth 'scapes i' th' imminent deadly breach; 

And of the cannibals that each other eat." 

— Othello, Act i, sc. 3. 

The seat of the government — The public buildings — The climate — The 
Museum — The theatre— The governor, Sir Arthur Gordon — Lady 
Gordon — A "Judas " — Wangariui — Xapier — Tlie situation — The 
Scotch element — Judge Kenny — Auckland — Changes in ten j-ears 

— Tlie Duke of Edinburgh — Story of an English officer and a Maori 
girl — Civilization and the Maoris — A noble -vvarrior-race — Hongi 
Ika, the great chief — His memorable last words — The War of 
1845 — Heke — His address to liis people — Maori superstition — 
Divination — The tohunf/as — Tha viaiaika — Heke's fort at Mawhe 

— Te Atua Wera — His exhortation — "The European God" — 
A runaway slave — Kawiti —Te Kahakaha — Heke's heroism and 
grandeur of character — A painful problem — England and her 
colonies — The Earl of Pembroke — Too little consistency in gov- 
ernment — The Maoris and religion — The Old Testament preferred 
to the New — The massacre of Poverty Bay — The Hau Haus — Te 
Kooti — Ropata — Class distinctions — Cannibalism — Immortality — 
Marriage — Tattooing — The way a chief shows favor — Names — 
Tobacco — The 7ne7-e ponamu — Love of warfare — Stoiy of a Maori 
law - student — The King Counliy — Half - caste — The Thames 
gold-fields — Lake Taupo — liotomahana Springs — Mountains — The 
Kuahiue range — The Manawatu — New Plymouth — Coaching across 
country — Tarauaki Province — An amusing incident — A Maori 
salutation. 

From Christchurch I took my company to 
Wellington, situated at the southwest point of 
North Island, which for years suffered so much 
from the effects of the Maori War. The journey 
by sea takes about twelve hours. Wellington 
Harbor is the finest, with the exception of 



50 AN AGrOB'8 TOUB. 

Auckland, in New Zealand, and tlie city stretches 
over its shores with a background of fine hills. 
The houses are all built of wood, perhaps, as a 
slight precaution in the eventuality of earthquake, 
to which awful occurrence experience has shown 
the locality is liable. A severe one occurred some 
years ago, in which several lives were lost, and 
enormous damage done to property. The seat of 
the New Zealand government was formerly Auck- 
land, but on account of its more central position it 
was removed to Wellington, to the great disgust 
of the Aucklanders. The Government House, 
a very simple structure, and the public buildings 
are of wood, and somewhat primitive in char- 
acter. The climate, on account of the peculiar 
position of Wellington, lying as it does unshel- 
tered on an ankle between the two islands, and 
exposed to storms and foul weather on all sides, is 
the worst in the country. It rains eight months 
out of the twelve, and, when it does n't rain, there 
are often fearful gales. They say a Wellington 
man can be recognized in any part of the world — 
he always puts his hand to his hat when he turns 
the corner of a street. 

The Museum contains a veiy large collection of 
Maori curiosities, including a meeting-house erected 
by the Maoris in one of their villages, from which 
it was removed and re-erected here. It shows a 
wonderful proficiency in design, carving, and art- 
workmanship. 

The theatre is a plain building and will accom- 
modate fifteen hundred people, and, like most of 



NOli Til ISLAND. — WELLING TOX. — ETC. '>\ 

the theatres of tlie country, has only stalls, dress 
circle, and pit. My engagement was only of nine 
nights' duration, under tlie special patronage of 
the governor of New Zealand, Sir Arthur Gordon, 
who, with Lady Gordon, came nearly every night 
to the theatre, and from whom I received the fol- 
lowing letter, in which lie signified his preference 
for certain plays : — ■ 

" Government House, New Zealand, 
" 19th April, 1S81. 

'■'- Dear Sir., — In reply to your letter of the 14tli 
inst., I am directed to inform you that his excel- 
lency will have much pleasure in being present at 
some of your representations in Wellington. 

"The plays which, in accordance with your 
invitation, his excellency would name, are : Much 
Ado About Nothing, The Merchant of Venice, 
and As You Like It. 

" His excellency would suggest Tuesday, the 
26th, for the first of these plays, unless a night 
later in the week would be more convenient for 
its representation. The Merchant of Venice 
and As You Like It his excellency would prefer 
to see either at the end of next week, or the 
beginning of the following week, by which time 
Lady Gordon will have arrived in Wellington. 

" These suggestions are, of course, intended to 
depend upon your convenience. 

" I am, dear sir, yours faithfully, 

" F. P. Murray, Private Secretary.'" 



52 AX AGTOIVS TOUB. 



At Wellington I found an old member of my 
company, who had played the traitor to me, left 
behind by his bogus manager who had induced 
him to leave my service, in very reduced circum- 
stances. He asked me to reinstate him in my 
company. " How can you, sir, expect such a 
thing? you know you have been a 'Judas' to 
me ! " I exclaimed. " Well, then," he replied, " be 
like ' J. C.,' forgiving, and take me back." I did 
as he wished. 

From Wellington we ran up to a place called 
Wanganui, located at the foot of several hills on 
the west of North Island. There is a railroad to 
it now, but formerly you had to go by coach, or 
in wretched little tugboats by sea. By road, for 
sixty miles of the route, partly along the sea-coast, 
it is most lovely scenery ; but after the coach 
leaves Foxton there are twenty -four miles of 
desert country, the most terrible imaginable ; these 
passed, however, and there open before you plains 
of the most fertile pasture-lands. The people 
in Wanganui are the worst in the country ; the 
church and drink are their only means of j)assing 
their leisure, and they alternate between these; 
if anything, the latter is in most favor with them. 
But, fortunately for the colony, most of them are 
going mad — out of every hundred madmen in 
Taranaki state -asylums seventy -five are from 
Wanganui. 

The manager of the theatre showed me the 
stage and auditorium, and I found it a very neat 
and compact little building in these respects. 



\01i TH ISLAXD. — WELLING TOY. — IJ TC. Xi 

" But where are the dressing-rooms ? " I asked. 

" The dressing-rooms? Oh ! yes, there is a room 
here," said he, " which is generally used for that 
purpose." 

" A room," I said ; " I require four — one for 
my own use, one for Miss Beaudet, one for the 
other ladies, and one for the gentlemen." 

The man looked thunderstruck. 

" The people who come here generally manage 
that for themselves," said he. 

" But I don't ; and except you can offer me 
four respectable rooms, I decline to act." 

The four rooms were run up, and the manager, 
no doubt, thought me a — bear ! 

On leaving Wanganui, we went to Napier in 
Hawke Bay Province — an eight hours' run. It 
is a charming spot, surrounded on three sides by 
sea, and has most beautiful hills ; still it is not very 
healthy, on account of morasses in the neighbor- 
hood. The people are enterprising, intelligent, 
and hospitable. The Scotch element predom- 
inates, and wherever that excellent element is 
prominent in the colonies, thoroughness and 
worthiness in dramatic art are sure to find 
support. 

At Napier I met Judge Kenny and his wife 
— very delightful persons. Judge Kenny is a 
descendant of an old English warrior-family, 
and Mrs. Kenny is a relative of Charles Kean. 
My reception in the little town was most 
enthusiastic and remunerative. 



54 AN ACTOB'8 TOUR. 

We next made for Auckland, wliich takes 
exactly twenty-four hours to reach from Napier. 
I had been in Auckland some ten years before, 
but there had been so many changes, and the 
town exhibited such an altered appearance, that 
I hardly recognized it. My previous visit was at 
the invitation of the Duke of Edinburgh, who, 
as captain of the Galatea, was cruising in the 
Australian waters, and whose friendship I enjoyed. 
The duke was, at the time, and I believe still is, 
fond of playing the violin. He asked me to be 
present at one of the rehearsals of the Auckland 
Choral Society, in which he was playing. The 
music was not first-class, but I remember that, 
during the rehearsal, I saw two ladies of remark- 
able beauty ; they were neither European, nor did 
they appear half-caste, and I could not make out 
to what people they belonged. They had the 
appearance of being, in every respect, perfect 
ladies, with large, ravishing, lustrous eyes and 
slight olive complexion. 

After the rehearsal was over, the duke said: 
"Well, Bandmann, I suppose you thought the 
music poor, but did you observe those two 
ladies?" 

I answered: "Who could help doing so? they 
are so wonderfully beautiful." 

" Indeed they are," said he, " but thereby hangs 
a tale." 

"Then, pray, let me hear it," said I, "for I 
have puzzled ray brains to place them amongst 



NOIi Til IS LA ND. — I VEL LINd TON. — E T(J. 55 



the nationalities of the world, and have given up 
the effort in utter failure." 

" I am not surprised at that," continued the 
duke, " for I never met any one unacquainted 
with the secret to reacli the right conclusion. 
Well, you shall hear all I know of their history. 
These liandsome girls are tlie daughters of an 
oflPfcer in the English army, who was sent many 
years ago to New Zealand on government busi- 
ness. He met a Maori girl and lived with her; 
she bore him these two daughters, and, for the 
sake of legitimating- the children, he married 
the mother. The children received a European 
education, and graced their father's house with 
their beauty and intelligence ; but one day, after 
twenty years of matrimonial bliss, the mother 
suddenly disappeared, having, in a paroxysm of 
relisfious fanaticism, followed an old Maori chief 
into the woods, taking with her only a blanket 
to cover her loins. From that day no more was 
heard of the old woman, but the girls are well 
married and live happily with their husbands." 

Of all cities in New Zealand, Auckland (for- 
merly called Waitamata) suffered most from the 
Maori War, and that proud warrior-race, which 
was subdued, has not been crushed : though every 
year its numbers are lessening from contact with 
an alien civilization. It is computed that at one 
time there were no less than four hundred thousand 
Maoris in New Zealand ; half a century ago they 
had dwindled greatly, and now there are known to 



j.y ACTOii'S roun. 



be less than a tenth of that number. Could the 
! tory of this race be fully written, it would prob- 
ably be one of the most marvelous romances of 
history. They have been called "the noblest of 
savages," and in many ways certainly are the most 
notable of barbarous races. They are pre-eminent 
in warfare ; skilled in military strategy ; zealous 
upholders of their own creeds of honor; incom- 
parable for bravery, possessed of many remarkable 
qualities in social life, great vigor of mind, 
extraordinary oratorical j)Owers, and patriotism 
absolutely fearless of death. 

A tradition is current among them that, long 
ago, when Hongi Ika, the great warrior-chief of 
the Maoris, saw that death was inevitable from a 
wound he had received in battle at Mangamuka, 
he gathered his relations and people about him at 
Mawhe and addressed them thus : " Children and 
friends, pay attention to my last words. After I 
am gone, be kind to the missionaries, be kind to 
the other Europeans, welcome them to the shore, 
trade with them, protect them, and live with them 
as one people ; but if ever there should land on 
this shore a people Avho wear red garments, who 
do not work, who neither buy nor sell, and who 
always have arms in their hands, then be aware 
that these are a people called soldiers, a dangerous 
people whose occupation is war. When you see 
them, make war against them. Then, O my 
children, be brave ! then, O friends, be strong ! 
Be brave, that you may not be enslaved, and 



NOR Til ISLAND. — WELLING TON. — ETC. 57 

that your country may not become tlie possession 
of strangers." 

The Maori cliief Heke, in the War of 1845, 
fought in the spirit of these words, spoken h}^ 
his rehative, Hongi Ika. When the hearts of 
the other chiefs failed them, and their courage 
forsook them, at the sight of the numbers and 
warlike appearance of the English army, Heke 
is said to liave called the people together for a 
" great talkee," and when the tribes drew back, 
to have uttered these remarkable words : "■ I will 
fight these soldiers. I will cut down the flagstaff. 
I will fulfill the last words of Hongi Ika. Be not 
afraid of these — ' all men are men ' — [a Maori 
proverb]. The soldiers are not gods; lead will 
kill them ; and if we are beaten at last we shall 
be beaten by a brave and noble people and need 
not be ashamed." Still the chiefs hesitated to 
join Heke, in fear of the strength of the foe, 
saying, "We will wait till a battle has been 
fought, and if he is successful tlien we will join 
him." 

Heke, therefore, started on the expedition with 
his people and those of his elder relative, Kawiti. 
They made for Kororareka to fight tlie English 
soldiers, and to cut down the flagstaff which, after 
the Treaty of Waitangi, the governor of New Zea- 
land caused to be erected at Maiki. The Maoris, 
notwithstanding their general intelligence, are 
fearfully superstitious, and this flagstaff had be- 
C(5me an object of the greatest abhorrence to them ; 



58 AN ACrOB'S TOTJR. 

a hundred superstitions had grown about it, and 
it was a symbol of every conceivable oppression, 
and injustice. They imagined it kept traders 
from their harbors, that it was a sign that their 
island had been taken by the English, and that 
their nobility and independence were no more. 
One thing they were certain about, namely, 
that they got less tobacco and fewer blankets 
than formerly, and their hearts became sad, 
and, at last, they attributed all their ill- 
fortune to the flagstaff, and they resolved 
that they would by a practical experiment 
decide the point ; so Heke Avent and cut it 
down. It was a daring act, but it was rewarded ; 
for soon after the flagstaff was cut down the 
customs-duties were rejDealed, and tobacco and 
other articles became cheaper. What better 
confirmation could the Maoris have had of their 
impression of the evil potency of the hated thing? 
The flagstaff down, fortune seemed to smile on 
them, and they concluded there must have been 
a mysterious connection between the flagstaff and 
their ill-luck; yes, its existence had been the 
source of all their evils. Would it be erected 
again ? Well, if it were, they knew what course 
to take. Soon after the flagstaff was re-erected, 
and again cut down at great risk. But it was 
erected a third time more securely, and this time, 
O hateful sight 1 the military were stationed 
around it. The courage of Heke, however, was 
equal to the occasion ; he resolved that he would 



XOli TH ISLAND. — WELLING TON. — ETC. 59 

down with it, though the act might cost his life, 
and so started on the expedition. On the night 
before the battle he and his followers are said 
to have had recourse to divination, by using 
miniature darts made of rushes or reeds, which 
the Maoris strongly believe in, though it would 
seem that the tohungas (priests) can make the 
sign favorable or otherwise. 

The dart for Heke was fortunate, but the darts 
for the foe and the flagstaff not so, and there was 
great joy in the Maori camp. Afterward Kawiti, 
being himself a tohunga, threw a raJcau (dart) for 
his own sake, then one for the foe ; either was 
straight and fair, but either turned the wrong way 
up, which is the sign of death. Then Kawiti said : 
" It is good. Here have I two darts ominous of 
success and bravery and death — our enemy will 
prove very strong and brave, they will suffer much 
from us and so will we from theni. I am not 
displeased, for this is war and not play." 

Throughout the night Heke and Kawiti, good 
generals as they were, spoke with great eloquence 
to their men, to give them resolution and courage. 
One thing seems to have surprised them greatly 
throughout the war, that the soldiers in the 
enemy's camp paid no attention to omens, and 
did a thousand things tremendously ''unlucky." 

The man first killed in a battle is called the 
matalka, and the one who succeeds in doing the 
deed is ever afterward held in great distinction, and 
the young Maoris will risk everything to obtain the 



CO AN AC TOWS TOUB. 

honor. Some of them seem to possess a charmed 
life, having been known in eleven different affrays 
to have won the distinction of killing the mataika. 
Indeed, the aptitude for this sort of business 
seems to increase with each success. 

While the battle of Kororareka was going on 
under Kawiti's leadership, Heke took the fortress 
of the jyakeJias (the English), and cut the hated 
flagstaff down for the third time. There were 
losses on both sides, and at last the Maoris set 
fire to the town of Kororareka, which had been 
evacuated by the pakehas, and this was the first 
exciting incident that occurred. 

Heke soon afterward built a fort at Mawhe, 
being resolved to fight the pakeha soldiers on the 
spot Avhere the memorable last words of Hongi 
Ika had been addressed to the assembled Maoris. 
At the completion of the fort, the spirit of 
Ngakahi (a familiar spirit the Maoris believe in) 
entered into Te Atua Wera, the greatest priest 
among them, and spoke to Heke and his followers 
by his lips : " Be brave and strong and patient. 
Fear not the soldiers, they will not be able to 
take this fort ; neither be you afraid of all those 
different kinds of big guns you have heard so 
much talk of. I will turn aside the shot, and 
they shall do you no harm ; but this pa (fort) 
and its defenders must be made tapu (sacred). 
You must particularly observe all the sacred 
rites and customs of your ancestors ; if you 
neglect this in the smallest particular, evil will 



NOBTll ISLAND. — WELLING TON. — ETC. Gl 

befall you, and I also shall desert you. You 
who pray to the God of the missionaries continue 
to do so, and in your jiraying see you make no 
mistakes. Fight and pray. Touch not the spoils 
of the slain; abstain from human flesh, lest the 
European God should be angr}-, and be careful not 
to offend the Maori gods. It is good to have 
more than one God to trust to. This war-party 
must be strictly sacred. Be brave, be strojig, be 
patient." 

During the siege of the fort, a slave fright- 
ened by the English guns ran away, but met 
in doing so Kawiti and his people, who were 
on their Avay to relieve Heke. He shouted : " Oh, 
the soldiers have a frightful gun ! it comes roaring 
and flaming ! " At which Kawiti stopped him with 
these words : " I know all about all sorts of guns : 
all guns will kill, and all guns will also miss ; this 
is the ahua (nature) of guns ; but, if you say one 
word more, I will split your head open with my 
tomahawk." Then the slave, fearing Kawiti's 
tomahawk more even than the "roaring and 
flaming gun " of the foe, ran back to the fort 
with the news of Kawiti's approach. 

To be taken a prisoner in Avar is considered 
a great disgrace by the Maoris, and in all cases 
where it is possible they will even enter the 
enemy's country to fire volleys on the spot on 
which any toa (chief or hero) of importance has 
fallen. This is called paura mamae (powder of 
pain and grief). 



G2 AN A C TOE',S TO UB. 

Everything goes to show that Heke was brave 
in the highest degree, and there are incidents 
recorded in the progress of the war that show 
him to have risen to the height of a sublime 
heroism. The news reached him that Te 
Kahakaha had fallen in the fight, and we are told 
that he was so affected by this that he threw his 
arms and garments (no doubt these last were not 
of a very elaborate description, for he does not 
appear at any time to have been " clothed in 
purple and fine linen," and, I imagine, never 
spent much time about his toilet) aside, and 
rushed naked along the line of the foe to the place 
where the old man had fallen, and the words 
exchanged between them are most touching: 
" Father, are you slain ? " asked Heke. Te 
Kahakaha answered : " Son, I am slain ; but in 
whose battle shall I die if not in yours ? It is 
good that I should die thus." 

Then Heke hastened to Te Atua Wera, and 
besought him to assist in removing the old chief 
to a place of safety. Te Atua Wera refused, 
because Heke had transgressed some sacred rule 
or other. " But is not this battle ? " roared out 
Heke, and here he seems to have reached, when we 
consider the rude conditions of the man, a height 
of grandeur and sublimity seldom equaled. 
" What care I for either men or spirits ? I fear not. 
Let the fellow in heaven look to it. Have I not 
prayed to him for years ? It is for him to look to 
me this day. I will carry off the old man alone." 



NOB Til I SLA ND. — WELLING TON. — E TC. GiJ 

We all know the result of the Maori War, but 
it is surely Avell to perpetuate by every means 
possible the memory of the nobility and heroism 
of a race fast becoming extinct ; while, perhaps, 
one of the most painful problems history suggests 
is whether by a different treatment they might 
not have risen to be a more numerous and greater 
people than they have at any time been. 

A great wrong has been done somewhere, and 
the questions arise : " How was it done ? and by 
whom ? " I am not able to answer these, and 
perhaps they can never be fully answered; but 
history shows that, in not a few cases, England 
has not been sufficiently wise and politic in 
the management of her colonies. "• In the good 
old times," says the Earl of Pembroke, "of con- 
quest and colonization (I like to be particular 
about my dates and places), the civilized nations 
of the day followed a simple policy in regard to 
the savage races with whom they came in contact, 
which may be roughly described as going their 
own way, and punishing the natives if they 
did n't conform to it, without troubling them- 
selves much about what the aforesaid natives 
thought or felt on the subject. If they under- 
stood the meaning of it, so much the better for 
them ; if they did not, it could not be helped. 
Holding themselves to be morally and intellectu- 
ally far superior to the savages, they maintained 
that it was the savages' business to understand 
and conform to their notions, and not their busi- 



64 AJV ACTOB'S TOUB. 

riess to regard the savages. As for giving savages 
the rights of civilized men, it was seldom thought 
of; savages were to be treated as such." All this, 
the earl tells us, is changed, and that, all through 
the checkered course of England's Maori policy, 
there has been an earnest desire to treat the 
native as a man and a brother, and to give him 
the status of a civilized man wherever it was 
possible to do so ; but the result has been far 
from satisfactory, and perhaps the old method 
would, after all, have been best. There may be 
some truth in the earl's opinion, for it would 
seem that there has been too little consistency 
in government, and that sometimes the Maoris 
have been flattered and caressed, and at other 
times received the most contrary treatment, until, 
shrewd as they are, they scarcely know what 
to expect, and are often in doubt as to whether 
a little^^ affray amongst themselves, or uprising 
against the pakehas, in which a few lives are lost 
and the war-spirit of the race shows itself in wild 
fury, altogether bereft of its old heroism and 
glory, will result in additional facilities being 
afforded them to obtain tobacco, whiskey, and 
blankets, or in a severe castigation by the ranga- 
tira pakehas (the rich, foreign gentlemen). It 
is certainly a misfortune for a savage, or at best 
a half-civilized, people to be in doubt on such 
a point. The policy of the government should be 
one sufficiently clear and decided for them to 
understand and respect its authority, and, at the 
same time, enlightened, just, and considerate. 



NOR Til ISLAND. — WELLING TON. — ETC. 65 

So far, however, as can be seen, the Maoris have 
only suffered from intercourse with Europeans, 
and are fast dying out — drink, tobacco, and 
clothing are more destructive to them than the 
powder and shot of the pakehas. They are, in 
a word, dying from contact with civilization. 
The "• sugar and flour " policy is doing its work ; 
being given necessaries, they are killing them- 
selves with luxuries. 

The Maoris have, perhaps, the least religious 
faculty of all races. The idea of a Su^jreme 
Being does not seem to have occurred to them : 
at least there is no word in their language 
representing it. The missionaries have adopted 
Atua^ for the purposes of teaching, which has 
several meanings, such as : a dead body, a ghost, 
a malevolent spirit, but not a Supreme Being. 
Maui., the Atua, who is said to have fished up the 
island, is conceived to have died long ago. With 
them religion is war ; and, while they have a most 
limited nomenclature of religion, they have a very 
rich vocabulary relating to war. Their adoption 
of Christianity, if indeed they can be said to have 
adopted it at all, was prompted by no higher 
motive than a desire to have " two gods on their 
side " ; and their conception of deity never rises 
higher than that of a dynamical force. One who 
lived long years amongst them has said : " I was 
there at the time when both Protestant and 
Iloman Catholic missionaries were first beginning 
to make their way in the country ; and the Maoris 



66 AN AGTOB'8 TOUB. 

of my tribe used to come to me and ask me ^yhich 
had the greatest mana (fortune, prestige, power, 
strength), the Protestant God or the Romanist one. 
I was always a good Churchman and used to tell 
them that the Protestant God could lick the other 
into fits. There was an old Irish sailor about five 
miles from me who used to back up the Roman 
Catholic God ; but I had a long start of him, and, 
moreover, was the best fighting-man of the two, 
which went a long way. In a short time I had 
about two hundred of the most muscular, blood- 
thirsty, hard-fighting Protestants you could wish 
to see." 

He further tells how, on another occasion, a 
great warrior-chief, the commander of the Taua 
(war-party or expedition), saluted him thus: 
" Look here, young fellow ! I 've done the in- 
cantations and made it all square with my 
god ; biit you say that you 've got a God stronger 
than mine, and a lot of our young fellows go 
with you ; there 's nothing like having two gods 
on our side, so you fellows do the proper business 
with him and then we '11 fight." Religion, with 
them, is a means to an end, and that is the 
best the principles of which incite to the killing 
of the greatest possible number of foes. For this 
reason many of the Maoris have a decided prefer- 
ence for the Old Testament over the New ; they 
are fascinated by the war-element in its narratives, 
and prefer the bloodthirstiness of the conception 
of God in the earlier pages of the Scriptures to 
the conception of the divine love in the later. 



\0H Til ISLAND. — WELLING TON. — ETC. 67 



The massacre of Poverty Bay was the act of 
some three hundred rangatiras (native gentlemen) 
of this type. They are said to have known their 
Old Testaments well, and to have turned their 
New to yet greater use — they made cartridges 
of them ! These gentlemen have formed them- 
selves into a sect called the Hau Haus, in 
which the worst features of Judaism are mixed 
up with the vilest native superstitions, and 
the outcome is a religion of plunder and blood. 
A ruffian, by name Te Kooti, was the founder of 
it, and the leader of the Hau Hau expedition ; 
and the foremost chief to oppose them was a Maori 
of tlie better type, Ropata. An Englishman asked 
Ropata, one day : — 

" What do you think would be done with Te 
Kooti if he were taken ? " 

" Oh ! you '11 make him a judge," he replied. 

" What do you mean ? " was further asked. 

" Well, the last two rebels you caught you made 
native assessors, and Te Kooti 's a much greater 
man than either of them, so I don't see how you 
can do less than make him a judge ; but you 
won't if I catch him." 

In these words Ropata made a strong point 
against the government. The Hau Haus believe 
the Old Testament refers to the Maoris ; they 
are the chosen people, the Messiah will come of 
them, and the English are the Philistines. Will 
Mr. Matthew Arnold agree with this ? Te Kooti 
was finally captured, and not elevated to "the 



68 J^LN ACTOR'S TOUR. 



bench," but c^iondemned to the cell; which did 

something tc-'f break his spell over his followers. 

The Hau P.^iaus, however, are still active. 

Class d'^.istinctions are very marked amongst the 

"■^Asaofis ; the tutuas are the low, worthless, and 
poor — the nobodies of society; the rangatiras are 
cliiefs, warriors, gentlemen — the somebodies of 
the world ; so the rangatira pakehas (rich, foreign 
gentlemen) are highly thought of, while the 
pakeha tutuas (the mean, poor foreigners) are 
despised. In old times if, by any chance, a Maori 
chief gave one of this latter class a good supper, 
he was sure to make his breakfast off him the 
next morning, for, he would coolly ask, " What 
else can I do with such stuff? It's only good 
for eating." The pakeha tutua was favored some- 
what if the chief killed him first, as sometimes, 
by way of a special luxury, he would set his teeth 
in his living, quivering flesh, and enjoy his break- 
fast all the more for the visible agony he saw this 
gentle treatment inflicted, never pausing till the 
life was out of him, save to exclaim : " How sweet 
is man's flesh ! " This sort of cannibalism is 
at an end, and now the rangatira pakehas are 
eating up the native tutuas in quite another 
way. The old, barbarous custom, too, of cutting 
themselves severely on the face, arms, and breast, 
when singing the tangi (the song of lamentation for 
the dead), with flints or shells, in token of sorrow, 
is almost obsolete. In the last moments the 
dying person is exhorted to cling to life, in words 



NOE Til ISLAND. — WELLING TON. — E TO. 6!) 

which are supposed to have a mystic meaning. 
Has the idea of immortality, in some dim and 
vague way, dawned on the mind of the Maoris? 

Love-making and marriage as practised by the 
Maoris are peculiar. The wooing lover, instead 
of kissing the object of his devotion, after the 
European fashion, rubs his nose gently over 
that of the Maori maiden's, and she, if his 
addresses are welcome, responds in the same 
way. There is no marriage ceremony, and 
the question of divorce does not seem to 
trouble them. A chiefs giving a woman to a 
man constitutes marriage. Both the man and 
the woman are tattooed on the face, especially 
on the lips, as soon as they are married, and 
some very handsome faces are thus completely 
spoiled. 

The highest token of the favor of a chief 
is for liim to take your hand in his and lick 
it, a ceremony which, though it may be very 
pleasant to him, is likely to stir unpleasant 
thoughts in one's mind, for one cannot forget just 
then the old Maori passion for human flesh, and 
the question is sure to suggest itself: "What if 
he passes on from licking to eating, and should 
gobble one up before one knows where one is ? " 
Some names amongst the Maoris are very sug- 
gestive, such, for instance, as those which trans- 
lated mean, " The eater of his own relations," or 
" The eater of foreigners," or " The devourer of 
children " ; the last has a strange savor of Dean 



70 AN ACTOR 8 TOUB. 

Swift's ironical prescription for dealing with Irish 
overpopulation and poverty, and hints that an 
idea that was thrown out in the great Dean's Loyal 
espousal of the wrongs of that unhappy country 
has at some time been a dreadful fact elsewhere. 

Tobacco is in great favor with them ; even 
infants sometimes, it is said, refuse the mother's 
breast and cry for the pipe ; and a dying 
Maori often asks for a pipe and dies smoking. 

The love of Avarfare is so great in them that 
they have been known, on learning that the enemy 
was without arms, to divide their own into halves 
and to send one half to the enemy with an invita- 
tion to fight. On one occasion a Maori chief was 
asked : " Why did you not attack the ammunition 
and provision wagons of the enemy ? " He replied : 
" Why, you fool ! if w^e had stolen their powder 
and food, how could they have fought ? " When 
a Maori kills a man of note in battle he usually 
commemorates the deed by adopting his name. 
The onere ponamu, a weapon made of rare green 
stone, is valued above all else, and a Maori 
will give all his other possessions to secure one. 
Nothing, no method of education and training, 
seems able to destroy the war-element in the Maori 
character. A friend of uiiDe, a solicitor in Napier, 
took a liking for a Maori boy of twelve years, and 
sent him to a good school ; he turned out a fine 
scholar, for he was more capable of learning than 
many of the European boys ; later he took him into 
his office, where he made great progress in his law 



XOUTII ISLAND. — WELLlXdTuy. — ET( '. 



studies. All went on charminglj-, and he thought 
himself a victor in this instance, and that he would 
be able to produce a Maori as faithful and grate- 
ful as a European, till one day the youtli, in his 
twenty-first year, suddenly disappeared. The tribe 
to which he belonged had a little feud with a 
neighboring one, and the young Maori, pupil of 
the law though he was, and very near to qualify- 
ing himself for its practice, was completely over- 
mastered by hereditary war-passion, and left 
forever liis Justinian and Blackstone for the more 
primitive, but perhaps, under certain circum- 
stances, not less successful instruments of per- 
suasion, his mere ponamu and tomahawk. 

The Maori hates ngvicultural work. One may 
travel for great distances through the King 
Country, a large tract of land between Auckland 
and New Plymouth, in the very heart of North 
Island, wliich is still in the absolute possession of 
the Maoris, and find not an acre of it cultivated. 

The streets of Auckland are full of these 
people, and some of the most extraordinary, 
motley-dressed figures are constantly seen there. 
A numerous half-caste is springing up, which 
is often, in physical appearance, finer than 
either the European or the Maori. Auckland is 
now a town of over sixty thousand inhabitants, 
and enjoys wonderful commercial prosperity. Six 
hours' run from there are the Thames gold-fields, 
which are still in progressive yielding, and about 
a day's journey takes one to Lake Taupo, which 



AN^ ACTOR'S TOUR. 



is twenty-five miles in length and twenty in 
breadth ; near to which are the hot springs of 
Rotomahana, famous for their medicinal qualities ; 
while south of these are two mountains — the 
Tongariro, a volcano, and the Ruapehu, in height 
ninety -one hundred and ninety -five feet, and 
snow-capped. 

In Auckland I met, at the house of my friend 
Dr. Scharland, — a gentleman eminent in the 
medical profession and for his scientific attain- 
ments, — the American consul, Mr. Grifiin, uncle 
to Mary Anderson, and spent many happy even- 
ings with him. 

From Auckland we returned to Napier, and 
then journeyed across country into the province 
of Taranaki. The scenery through which we 
passed was magnificent, which compensated some- 
what iov the fatigue of the journey arising from 
its having to be made by coach and the roads 
in some places being rough. The route lies over 
the Ruahine range, in which we passed through 
several gorges, one over four miles long. The 
Manawatu River is one of the grandest sights that 
eye ever rested on, and the mind is roused to 
a pitch of intense excitement as the coach 
descends an incline hundreds of feet deep, — the 
roaring water below, the wildest scenery around, 
the dark skies above, — in fearful zigzag fashion ; 
the driver sure of his art driving at such a furious 
rate that one imagines every minute one will be 
dashed against the rocks, or hurled down the 



\<>J,' Tli LSLAXlJ. — WELLING TOX. — ETC. 73 

gorge with coach, horses, driver, and alL One's 
hair literally stands on end till one iinds one's self 
safely at the bottom, facing the river, which in 
its awful gloom looks like Acheron with its 
hovering shades. A boat took the coach and 
horses across, and after a journey of tweh^e hours 
from Xapier we arrived at a point where we took 
the railroad to Wanganui ; from there we went 
by coach to Patea; then to Howera, — both 
sweetly beautiful country towns. In the latter 
there was a shock of earthquake twenty seconds 
in duration at five o'clock in the morning on 
the preceding twenty -sixth of June. Here I took 
a coach and drove over the worst bit of 
road in the world, the horses at times actually 
disappearing and only showing their ears above 
the fearful gullies and holes, and the coach 
shaking and tumbling in a manner to which a 
small craft on the Atlantic in foul weather is 
a cradle. By two days' patient endurance of this 
we reached New Plymouth, having crossed by 
land the entire North Island, and passed through 
scenery with which there is none even in 
Scotland or Germany to compare for grandeur 
and sublimity. 

In New Plymouth, on the first night of Hamlet, a 
funny incident occurred. The house was crowded, 
and the stage was very small. After Laertes was 
killed, and Hamlet had done away with the King, 
Hamlet found to his amazement that there was 
no room left for him to lie down and die respecta- 



74 AN AUTOB'S TOUli. 

bly, so there was nothing to be done save whisper 
to the King : " Hang it man, move up and let 
me die!" The King, obedient to the manager's 
voice that he detected beneath Hamlet's whisper, 
crawled slowly into the first wing. 

It was while walking down from my hotel one 
day, in the same town, that I suddenly found 
myself embraced by a pair of brawny arms, and 
saluted in the following fashion : " O Romeo ! 
wat 's de matter wit dee dat you are Romeo?" 
I looked Tip and saw a Maori woman with a l»ig 
bouquet. " O, plees, gif dis to Miss Juliet for der 
hacting so bufully dast nit." I promised to do 
so, and thanked the kindly soul, who had seen 
Romeo and Juliet the night before and wellnigh 
lost her balance. 

From New Plymouth we returned to Welling- 
ton, and then passed over to Nelson at the north 
of South Island. Both New Plymouth and 
Nelson are most beautiful towns, and their 
climate, especially that of Nelson, which has 
earned the name of Sleepy Hollow, is incom- 
parable. Italy is the only country that can come 
up to it, but Italy itself has not the even 
temperature of Nelson. From there we made a 
tour back to Christchurch, Lyttelton, Tiniaru, 
Oamaru, and Dunedin ; which city honored me 
with a farewell banquet on the night preceding 
my departure for Tasmania. 



CHAPTER v. — Tasmania. 

HOBART TOWN. 

"If you look in the maps of the worlil, I waiTant you will find, in the 
comparisons between Macedon and Monmouth, that the situations, look 
you, is both alike. There is a river in Macedon, and there is also more- 
over a river at ^lonmouth : . . . and there is salmons in both." 

— King Henry V, Act iv, sc. 7. 

The old convict establishments — A story of the past — Port Arthur — 
The Derwcnt River- Mount Wellington — English traits of the 
people and country- No disagreeable insects— Xo wild animals, 
except the black opossum— Produce — Orchards — Whale - fish- 
eries — The seat of the government — Climate — Drives — Fern-trees 
— Forests — The roads — Salmon - trout — Mineral wealth — The 
habits of the people — Love of Art — The Government House 
gi-ounds- The Botanical Gardens— The railroad — Launcestou. 

It takes between three and four days from 
the Bluff, the last station of the South Island of 
New Zealand, to reach Hobart Town, the ca[)ital 
of Tasmania, an island that lies off Victoria, being 
separated by the Bass Strait from the main 
Australian continent. The island formerly bore 
the name of Van Dieman's Land, which has 
been changed, by an act of parliaiuent, on account 
of its unpleasant associations with the place as 
a convict settlement. 

In Tasmania, as in New South Wales, the 
forefathers of the country were convicts ; but 
they have left little or no trace. behind them, for, 
ill all the world, there is not a better class of 
])eople to be found than the Tasmanians. It is 
said that the convicts had a very good time of it 



7G AN ACTOB'S TOUB. 

in former years, for the goaler used to let them 
out in the morning, and allow them to come 
back at a stated hour in the evening. On one 
occasion a convict was later than the permitted 
time, and the enraged goaler told him that, if 
this occurred again, he would be locked out ; 
but tradition says it never happened again, for 
the lodgings at the goal were so comfortable at 
night, and the liberty enjoyed for excursions 
about the island was so complete by day, that the 
arrangement was in every way delightful. But 
the story may, perhaps, point in two directions : 
while it records a fact true to the experience of 
some few favored convicts, it is more likely 
intended as a bitter irony on the general system 
of their treatment. At least, the history of the 
convict settlements on the island had a darker 
side, than which perhaps there would be nothing 
more painful, if the story could be fully written, 
for philanthropists and political economists of 
to-day to ponder ; and especially would this be 
so in the case of Port Arthur. 

The entrance to the town is very romantic ; the 
Derwent River for miles, and which in some places 
is nearly two miles wide, is full of picturesque 
scenes, while it is deep enough to allow, at all 
times, the largest vessels to enter. A navy might 
safely ride in the waters of Hobart Harbor ; and 
the town on its edge, with Mount Wellington, 
four thousand feet high, for a background, is a 
very fine sight. 



HOB ART TOWN. 77 



The Hobartians are pre-eminently English, and 
it is not difficult to find amongst them instances of 
those older types of English character which are 
even growing scarce in the Midlands of Old Eng- 
land. The streets, the houses, the parks, and every- 
thing in the town, have an English appearance ; the 
doctor calls upon his patients in the old-fashioned 
English o^ig, and the wealthier farmers drive to 
market in the same, and this vehicle, which has 
been spoken of as " that famous test of respecta- 
bility," is a symbol of the entire conditions of 
the place ; and to a great extent the very climate 
is English, only it is clearer and more beautiful. 
Hobart Town, indeed the whole of Tasmania, is 
like New Zealand in having no disagreeable bugs, 
mosquitoes, snakes, or wild animals of any kind, 
except the black opossum, which abounds in con- 
siderable numbers. The principal produce of the 
country is timber and fruit. There are orchards 
in the neiofhborhood of Hobart Town that con- 
tain over six thousand trees. All European fruit 
grows in Tasmania, and it may be said to be the 
fruit-grower and jam-maker for the rest of the 
Australasias. Apples, which are very scarce in 
New Zealand and New South Wales, and which 
do not grow at all in Queensland, attain to an 
exquisite size and flavor in Tasmania, and the 
same may be said of its peaches, cherries, and 
pears. Beyond these, corn and hops are grown 
for exportation, and there are whale - fisheries. 
Nearly as large as Ireland, the total population of 



78 AlV AOTOB'S TOUB. 



the island doe-s not reach one fourth of its number. 
Hobart Town, being the capital and the seat of the 
government, is the busiest place on the island, and 
it is very pleasant to visit because everything is so 
neat, clean, and good. It is a great pleasure and 
health resort for the Victorians and people from 
all parts of the Australasias, during the summer 
and autumn, that is, from December to the end of 
April ; and the Hobartians hope it may erelong, 
on account of the great beauty of the country 
and the salubriousness of the climate, become a 
health-station for India. During the aeason the 
town is full, and one can hardly get a room for 
love or money. The Museum, the Library, and 
the Town Hall, are built of a fine, white 
stone, and are large and imj^osing structures for 
the size of the town, the settled population 
being only twenty-six thousand. The residence 
of the governor is one of the handsomest govern- 
mental buildings in the colonies and commands 
a fine view of the bay. The drives from the town 
are lovely, especially those along the harbor and 
the Derwent, up the Huon Road, or to Fern- 
tree Gully, which, in picturesqueness, variety of 
scenery, and wealth of natural beauty, are equal 
to any I have seen in my manj^ travels. On the 
way to the Gully thousands of fern-trees line the 
road on either side, rising to from twelve to fifteen 
feet, and their wide-spreading foliage overhead 
forms one of those beautiful aisles in the vast 
temple of nature, the sight of which makes us feel 



HOB ART TOWN. 79 



that man's noblest efforts in architecture are poor 
in comparison with those of the divine. There 
are wonderful forests spread over the hillsides and 
on the mountains of the island, many of the trees 
rising to a greater height than the famous Welling- 
tonia of California, and growing, not in little 
detached groups, but thousands in company, and 
forming a forest scenery unique and grand. Some 
of the trees are over twelve feet in diameter, and 
one tree has been discovered which has reached 
the enormous height of four hundred and seventy- 
one feet, while the highest tree of California is 
only about three hundred and twenty-five feet. 

The roads, which were made by convicts, are 
of the finest kind and kept in perfect order, yet 
to " do " the island requires many departures 
from them, and entails great walking, as in all 
mountainous countries. 

It is to the Tasmanians, and thanks to them, 
that Australia owes the introduction of the salmon- 
trout. The raising of this valuable fish takes 
place about twenty miles from Hobart Town, close 
to the Derwent River, and acres and acres of land 
are used for this purpose. The different sheds 
are most scientifically managed ; the spawn was 
formerly introduced from the old country, but 
now tliey have experimented with artificial eggs 
witli successful results. In a few years the large 
rivers of Tasmania will be rich in salmon-trout, 
and another great branch of commerce will open 
to that peaceful and beautiful country. There 



80 AK ACTOB'8 TOUR. 

are gold, silver, and lead mines waiting to be 
worked. The latter discovery raised quite a furore 
and great rush amongst the mining community a 
few years ago. It takes a good deal to excite the 
Tasmanians. They are very slow and methodical. 
They shut their warehouses and offices from twelve 
to one every day, as regularly as they are in bed 
by nine o'clock in the evening. But they are an 
art-loving people, and the legitimate drama goes 
well with them. They treated us with generous 
support, filling the pretty little theatre every night 
for one entire month. I made many friends there. 
Their love of the Beautiful shows itself nowhere 
more than in the Government House grounds and 
Botanical Gardens, which leave nothing to be 
desired; and both are freely open to the public. 
In the latter every imaginable flower is represented 
and the beds are laid out in exquisite taste, fully 
rivaling, if not surpassing, the gardens of Kew, 
Versailles, or Vienna. 

"Here could I breath my soul into the air, 
As mild and gentle as the cradle-babe." 

Tasmania has its railroad, like all the other 
rising Australian colonies, which extends from 
Hobart Town to Launceston. The latter is a dull 
and' uninteresting town, cold and unintelligent. 
It had its chance lately on account of the " lead 
rush," which brought considerable capital from 
Melbourne into the country, but soon relapsed 
into its former sleepy state ; from which there 



HOB ART TOWN. 81 



seems no chance of its ever again awaking. 
From Launceston to Melbourne takes about 
twenty-two hours by the Tasmania Steamship 
Company i thirteen by sea, crossing the bar, the 
rest by river — flat, stale, and unprofitable. 



CHAPTER VL — Australia. 

VICTORIA . — MELBOURNE. 

" Keep a gamester from the dice, and a good stiident fi'om his book, 
and it is wonderful." 

— Merry Wives of Windsor, Act Hi, sc. 1. 

The Opera House — "Dead or Alive" — A siiccessful engagement — 
Australian passion for gambling — Horse-racing — The "Derby" — 
Sir Wilfrid Lawson and Mr. Parnell — The Melbourne Cup — The 
ladies are inveterate gamblers — Tlie grand stand — How the 
ladies dress — Two hundred thousand people assemble on the course 

— The "Cup "and the "Totalisator" —Burke Street — Supporters 
of the turf — The squatters — A good squatting - station — The 
squatter's enemies — Melbourne pre-eminently modern — Indiflference 
to the higher aims of Art — Theatrical managers — Public institutions 

— The suburbs — Mr. Mowbray, mayor of Melbourne— The Duke 
of Edinburgh— Charles Mathews — Sunday in Austi-alia — The art 
of cooking — The need of good hotels — Rover and Jessie are 
taken on board the Galatea — The German Turn Verein. 

On October 1, 1881, I opened at the Opera 
House, Melbourne, a theatre capable of holding 
twenty-five hundred people, and as beautiful a 
structure as one can wish to see. The house was 
crowded in every part, the receipts on that single 
occasion being over two hundred pounds (one 
thousand dollars), and the reception given to me 
and Louise Beaudet was the most cordial. I had 
not reappeared in Melbourne for over ten years, 
and all my old friends and acquaintances reas- 
sembled to give me a hearty welcome. I played 
in the first place Narcisse, which had a run of 
nearly a fortnight. I then played Tom Taylor's 
Dead or Alive, a drama written expressly for 



VICTORIA . — MELB O UltNEi 83 

me by the author, and played by me iii' London 
with considerable success. The last week was 
devoted to Shakespeare, in which Louise Beaudet 
was especially introduced, and won golden 
opinions, both as Ophelia and Juliet. The entire 
engagement, considering that it occurred in the 
worst month in the year, at least for the 
drama (namely, the month of October, which 
precedes the annual " Cup " week), was a great 
success. The reader may ask why that month 
should be considered the worst in the year, and 
his surprise at the assertion is reasonable, but 
those who have been in Australia, and have been 
present on the occasion of a " Melbourne Cup " 
meeting, will readily understand. No description 
can be conveyed by words of the mad passion or 
the rage all over Australia for gambling — 
especially horse-backing. Racing is, with all 
Englishmen, an exciting passion, and all over 
England this sport has been kept up to the enjoy- 
ment of the people. The " Derby " is a national 
festival which England will never give up ; the 
one occasion of the year on which even the Lords 
and Commons, in Parliament assembled, forget 
the wrongs of Ireland, the Permissive Bill, and 
the irksome task of the "rectification of foreign 
frontiers," and commingle with the multitudes at 
Epsom, in gayest spirit and the most festive robes. 
It is even whispered that Sir Wilfrid Lawson has 
been seen arm in arm with Mr. Parnell on the 
course, with the gayest ribbons in their hats, and 



84 AN AC TOE' 8 TOUB. 

that they both, at such a time, have little felici- 
tous dealings with the book-makers, in which 
each tries to forget his political monomania. I 
cannot vouch for its truth, but report has it that 
once upon a time Mr. Parnell was overheard 
thus : — 

" Come, Sir Wilfrid, the Permissive Bill be 
d — d. The race has begun. Let 's away to the 
grand stand." 

"Nay, nay, Parnell, not quite in such a hurry, 
for I was, you know, about to say. Home Rule 
be d — dynamited ! but come, let 's turn in here 
(a booth where liquors are sold) and take 'a wee 
drap of ould Irish,' and then to the race." 

Be this as it may, what would a Cockney do 
without his annual Derby? or a Liverpool man 
without the Chester Cup ? But these English 
sports come but once a year, and when they are 
over no one thinks of them, except the gamblers, 
till a week or so before they come round again. 
But it is not so with Melbourne, aye, I may 
almost say, entire Australia. 

The Melbourne Cup is an event which is talked 
about, and looked forward to, from the day after 
it has been run to the day in the following year 
on which it will be run again. The ladies are 
inveterate gamblers, believing with Shakespeare 
that "the gentler gamester is the soonest winner." 
Thousands assemble hours before the first race 
begins, on the enormously large grand stand, 
capable of seating upward of fifty thousand 



VICTORIA. — MELB UBNE. 85 

people, so that they may have good places, and 
do not leave them even during luncheon for fear 
that they may lose their seats. They are armed 
with pencils and cards, and note the runs and 
their bets down in a business-like and methodical 
manner that convincingly proves that they are 
old stagers. 

They win or lose in their sweepstakes without 
showing the slightest feeling of pleasure or grief, 
and they settle their accounts with great spirit. 
Their excitement and shouts and enthusiasm 
over the individual races are charming to see 
and hear, and their dresses and toilets are a 
spectacle worth chronicling. From Cup day to 
Cup day these fair, gentle Avomen break their 
tender heads about what new and elaborate cos- 
tume, never before seen, they are to wear at the 
next great meet ; and as each is anxious to out- 
shine the other, the motley crowd of diversified 
costumes is indescribable. 

Imagine, gentle reader, the most heavenly day 
that nature can bless mortals with, neither too 
hot nor too cold, with a pure, bracing, rapturous 
atmosphere which makes the young heart beat 
with joyful gratitude, and the old heart forget 
that it is burdened with age and trouble ; the 
lawn smiling with the brightest of all green 
grasses, and the sun warming your inmost soul 
with pleasure and delight ; round you a swarm 
of human heads, nearly two hundred thousand 
persons, and everything gayety and happiness. 



86 AN AGTOB'S TOUB. 

Among this crowd of holiday-seekers you behold 
swarms of women who have been devising every 
possible means to dress in all the colors of the 
rainbow,/ and to cover themselves up with heavy 
silks, damasks, laces, gold and silver braidings, 
feathers, flowers, red and yellow boots, diamonds 
by the bushel, and all conceivable designs of 
jewelry and ornaments. I saw a woman dressed 
as follows: a crimson, heavy, damask silk robe, 
wrought with large patterns ; a train of almost six 
yards dimension ; a crimson hat with a crimson 
feather ; crimson gloves and crimson shoes ; a tre- 
mendously heavy, gold chain and huge gold watch, 
which she took out every few seconds either to 
show (as an Irishman would say) that she had it 
in her pocket, or that it was of heavy, solid gold. 
In this costume she strutted up and down the large 
lawn, proud as a peacock showing her feathers ; and 
while the sun in sarcasm exposed her ugly colors 
in its own beauteous, bright rays, this woman, no 
doubt, considered herself a queenly person. 

Another lady had a similar costume in bright 
green, not the sage-green of modern eestheticism, 
than which there is nothing more beautiful (unless 
you have too much of it), and such an enormous 
train that the passers-by had to jump over it. 
This, with the exception of a few sensible ladies 
who choose comfortable, always-charming muslin, 
is the average fashion of the Melbourne ladies 
on the Cup day. There is much room in this 
paradise of Australian fair women for the genius, 
enterprise, and costuming dreams of a Worth. 



VICTORIA. — MELB UBNE. 87 

But the evil the annual Cup produces does not 
end here : the above is but folly and we can afford 
to smile over it. The moral damage it does is 
immense, especially upon the mind of the young, 
who begin with the age of ten, or even earlier, 
not only to save, but to steal and rob, that they 
may be able to bet and to gain a " sweepstake," 
which, by the way, by no means always follows 
from said betting ; or a *' Totalisator " — a sort of 
bogus lottery institution which gives every one, 
apparently, a chance, but in which the person who 
runs it mostly wins, formed all over the Austra- 
lasias for the purpose of fraud, and which carries 
on its business in so brazen a manner that the 
various governments had to step in and check 
its operations after it had done incalculable mis- 
chief and poisoned the minds and ruined the 
pockets of thousands and tens of thousands of 
weak-headed fools. It is an experience never to 
be forgotten to see Burke Street the night before 
the Cup. There is usually over one hundred 
thousand people on that street, crowded within 
a space of a few hundred yards, anxious to get 
a "tip," or to hear some news about the latest 
chances of the favorite. And as the winner of 
the Australian Derby — a race run a few days 
before the Cup — generally also wins this, the 
excitement that follows that race is immense. 

The Cup is the great power of the Australian's 
universe, and what used to be a picnic and a 
delightful season of pleasure has become the 



88 AN ACTOB'S TOUB. 

tyrant and haunter of the minds of the men, 
women, youths, and even children, of that coun- 
try — everybody and everything are rushed along 
in the whirlpool of vulgar madness ; entire cities 
become depopulated of their inhabitants during 
that week, and steamship and railroad companies 
exert themselves to the uttermost to meet the 
extra demands ; and it is no exaggeration to say 
that a week before the Cup day as many as two 
hundred thousand people flock into the city of 
Melbourne, which has, during that period, a 
population of over a third of a million. 

"Foolery does walk about the orb like the sun; 
It shines everywhere." 

The squatters are the kings of the Australian 
colonies, and many of them are great supporters 
of the turf. The Cup of last year (1883) was 
won by a Mr. White, a sheep squatter, who made 
not less tlien two hundred thousand pounds 
(a million dollars) by that little transaction. 
Squatters have made enormous fortunes in their 
peculiar industry, but sheep and cattle raising 
has been brought now to such a fine point 
that only rich men can hope to succeed. 
Years ago it was no uncommon occurrence for 
young men to invest in sheep stations with as 
little as one thousand pounds, and after a few 
years' successful management, in which they were 
favored by rain and the high price of wool in 
the market, to sell out at a clear profit of forty 



VICTORIA. — MELBOURNE. 89 



thousand, or even in some cases bixty thousand, 
pounds. 

Now, things are all changed in this respect. 
Rapid fortunes from the squatter's occupation are 
still possible to men of small capital in North 
Australia, but in the South the lines are drawn 
so close that money stands, at times, as low as 
four per cent. 

A squatting-station of two or three thousand 
acres of good land cannot be bought under fifty 
or sixty thousand pounds, and there are stations 
that are worth double or treble as much. 

The squatters' greatest enemies are drought, 
kangaroos, and especially rabbits. Not many 
years ago, the Australians complained of not 
having any rabbits in their country. A few dozen 
pairs were imported, and now they have become 
so plentiful and are such a terrible devastation 
that the farmers and squatters groan under them 
and are devising all possible means and plans for 
their destruction. Shot and powder are impotent 
against this nuisance ; even poison has been tried 
with no very satisfactory result, and a fortune can 
be made by any one who can devise a sure means 
of freeing Australia from the tyranny of the 
rabbit. Some of the squatters have as much 
as forty thousand acres of splendid land, and 
make two or three thousand pounds a week by 
selling fat cattle. It is said that one squatter has 
spent sixteen thousand pounds in the effort to 
extirpate the rabbit from his estate ; in one year 
as much as three thousand pounds, but in vain. 



90 AN ACTOB'S TGUB. 

New Zealand suffers no less from this pest, and 
I need not say that the Australian rues the hour 
in which he introduced this harmless, inoffensive 
little animal. 

With the kangaroo it is quite a different 
thing ; he is only to be found in pairs and herds, 
and is gradually being driven further North. 
Besides, though he eats nearly as much as a sheep, 
he tickles the passion common to all Australians 
for sport; they get great pleasure out of him, 
and his hide is useful, and his tail most appetiz- 
ing. 'T is a wonderful tail he has, containing, it 
is said, forty yards of sinews. Even his meat is 
not to be despised. On one of my overland 
journeys from Melbourne to Adelaide I had some 
kangaroo-steak, which was quite as tender as that 
of an ox. My host, a shepherd, who, by the way, 
had two of the most magnificent kangaroo-hounds 
I had ever seen, explained that the meat only 
needed to be kept in water for twenty-four hours, 
and it became quite tender and delicious. I never 
made a better dinner than that day, after a sixty 
miles' ride, off a large kangaroo-steak, a pot of tea, 
and lots of damper. In some parts of Australia 
the favorite method with the squatters of hunting 
the kangaroo is to chase them, not on horseback, 
but in a buggy, four-in-hand. 

Melbourne is certainly a very beautiful city, 
pre-eminently modern in type. The streets are 
wide, the houses elegant, the theatres spacious, 
and the public buildings handsome enough to 
grace a metropolis. 



VICT.OBIA. — MELBO UBNE. 91 

But the public of Melbourne is no longer what 
it used to be. In former years the people might very 
deservedly be denoted among the most intelligent, 
generous, and appreciative of civilized communities, 
but now all is unlike the days of yore. The 
city has become stupid, licentious, ungenerous, 
and for the most part indifferent to the higher 
aims and ideals of Art. In public taste and 
sentiment it has been systematically demoralized 
by managers, who, in their desire to please and 
attract, have made their entertainments too cheap 
and offered too much quantity — quality has ceased 
to be the rule with them — for too little money, or, 
as it is the case during the principal part of the 
year, for next to and sometimes even for nothing. 
The better section of the public has in consequence 
become apathetic toward the theatre, and the very 
name of it creates e7inui, or evokes bitter con- 
tempt. The colonial generation of to-day prefers, 
at any time, a pipe, a mug of colonial ale, a dice- 
box, or a billiard-cue, to the best drama in existence. 
I have seen performances in Melbourne, at the 
Bijou Theatre, and also at the Royal, before 
deserted houses, in which the management must 
have lost heavily night after night. Let no one 
of mj'' own profession visit Australia with his 
mind set chiefly upon Melbourne, or even Sydney, 
for assuredly any one who does so will be rudely 
shocked out of all dreams and dreadfully shaken 
in expectations. Australia means a large conti- 
nent, but the two largest cities are dead to 
dramatic art and finer sesthetic sentiment. 



92 AXACTOB'S TOUB. 

Melbourne, liowever, has some fine public 
insticutions. The Library, the Town Plall, the 
Post-office, the House of Parliament, and the 
Exhibition Buildings, are all worthy of a great, 
rising, commercial city, and in the general plan 
and width of the streets it is altogether the finest 
city in the South. The Botanical Gaidens cannot 
be praised too highly; they are the largest in 
Australia, and well cared for, affording a delight- 
ful retreat from the glare and tumult of the 
streets ; they are perhaps not so beautiful as 
those at Sydney, and are said to be less of 
interest scientifically than those at Adelaide, 
but they are well adapted to afford rest and 
pleasure to the heart and eye of a weary pub- 
lic. Melbourne proper has a population of 
about seventy thousand, while in the suburbs 
there are over one hundred and fifty thousand; 
St. Kilda, Brighto]!, Kew, Yarra-yarra, and other 
places in the neighborhood, being filled with 
beautiful houses and fine gardens and lawns. 

During my stay in Melbourne I had the pleasure 
— and it was to me a very great one — of meeting 
many of my old friends again, and amongst them 
Mr. Mowbary, one of the largest drapers in Aus- 
tralia, who, on the occasion of my former visit, 
was mayor of Melbourne, and with a courtesy 
and generosity that showed his true public spirit 
and appreciation of the benefits of Art to a com- 
munity, and that he could find time, notwithstand- 
ing the immense claims of business and public 



VICTORIA. — MELBOURNE. 93 

affairs upon him, to think on oth.er things, less 
tangible but not less important to the wellbeing 
of a people, gave me a public banqu'.et, at v/hich 
he said : " I consider it a part of my duty 
as chief magistrate of the town to entertain dis- 
tinguished artists." Indeed, all my old .connec- 
tions were revived from the time — ten year;s ago 
— of my intimacy with the Duke of Edinburgfh, 
who every evening came into my dressing-room, to 
whicli he had a key of his own and could come 
and go as he liked, and where he could be abso- 
lutely at ease and get relief from the strained 
etiquette of Melbourne society and the detestable 
follies of that lionizing of royalty to which he was 
everywhere else subjected. 

I remember how, one evening — and I fear it 
was a Sunday — the duke dined with me and 
afterward had a game of e carte., but finding that 
rather slow I proposed loo, at that time the favorite 
game with the Australians, — " Nap " has now 
taken precedence, — and that I should invite 
Charles Mathews and his wife, who at that time 
were playing an engagement in Melbourne. The 
duke was delighted, and I was about to write a 
note of invitation, when he wrote the following, 
which I copied : — 

"Melbourne, November 6, 1870. 

" Dear Mathews, — H. R. H. is spending the 

:!fternoon with us. Sunday in this place is 

uncommonly dull and we are thinking of playing 



94 JX ACTOE'S TOUB. 

a little game of ^carte, but should it be con- 
venient to Mra Mathews and yourself to join us 
during the afternoon it would give H. R. H. and 
us great pbasure, and we might even initiate 
H. R. H. into the glorious mysteries of loo, to 
which J^c present he is a stranger. If you can 
manage, come to high tea." 

Soon after we received the following character- 
istic reply from Charlie : — 

" Menzes Hotel, Sunday. 
" Dear Bandmann, — Both myself and Mrs. 
Mathews feel highly flattered over your kind 
invitation to meet H. R. H. to help to initiate 
him into the 'glorious mysteries of loo.' I shall 
endeavor my best to make him a victim, but as 
I have invited a friend to a low dinner, I cannot 
accept your invitation to high tea. You must 
therefore make our excuses to H. R. H., but we 
shall be on the spot immediately after our low 
dinner. Your 

"Chakles Mathews." 

We kept up our little game of loo till the next 
morning, and when we rose neither of us had lost 
or won much, but we had a pleasant night of it, 
and H. R. H. liked the game immensely. 

Sunday in Australia is, of all days, the most 
tedious. One is obliged to dine at one, or latest, 
at two o'clock, for the sake of the servants, and as 
you generally rise on that day an hour or two later 



VICTOEIA.— MELBOURNE. 95 

than usual, you either have to give up your break- 
fast, or take breakfast and dinner together, or one 
immediately after the other. And as the Austra- 
lians eat meat, and that plentifully, at every meal, 
the amount of beef, mutton, and pork, consumed 
in one day, and on Sunday, the briefest of days, 
unless you sit up all night as H. R. H. and our 
friends did at loo, — but perhaps the Australians do 
not carry their vices to that extent, — is indescrib- 
able. Meat is so abundant and so cheap that the 
poorest in the land can afford to have it at every 
meal. But the art of cooking in Australia needs 
more attention than it receives. In no country 
does the Anglo-Saxon mind show its utter helpless- 
ness in affairs of the palate and good cooking more 
than there, where foreigners are so scarce. The 
monotonous sameness of the cuisine all over the 
Australasias is deplorable — chops, steaks, and 
joints, joints, steaks, and chops, three times a day 
in seven days of the week, and thirty-one days of 
the month, and from the beginning to the end of 
the 3^ear, is dreadfully monotonous in the end, or 
rather because the end is never reached. Poultry 
is also plentiful, but it is tasteless — similar to the 
American turkey, and the Australian fish is very 
poor, except in New Zealand and Tasmania, where 
the rivers produce a better qualit}'. What Mel- 
bourne and Sydney sadly lack are first-class 
hotels, combined with superior restaurants. In 
this direction there are positive fortunes to be 
made in the future. 



96 AN ACTOE'S TOUE. 

A propos of my former visit to Melbourne is 
the following : The Duke of Edinburgh was very 
fond of two of my dogs (I had six) which accom- 
panied us on our frequent rides together. I 
finally promised to give him these: they were 
brother and sister, named Rover and Jessie : and 
one day took them on board the Galatea just 
before she was leaving the city. I gave particular 
instruction to one of the marines to tie them up 
well. Then, after shaking hands with the duke 
and watching the vessel out of sight, amidst the 
cheers of thousands of spectators who had 
assembled to shout their " God speed you ! " to 
the sailor-prince, I rode home and took my dinner. 
Two hours after I went to the stable to look after 
the rest of my family, two horses and four dogs, 
when, to my amazement, Rover, dreadfully wet 
and dirty, jumped up into my face kissing and 
barking, almost mad with joy. I could not 
understand how the dog could have come back 
to Melbourne, for I had seen it tied up, and the 
Galatea out of sight. Two days later, however, 
Captain Standish, superintendent of the police 
in Victoria, received the following telegram from 
the duke, then at Sydney : " A brown retriever 
dog, given to me by Bandmann, jumped over- 
board several miles after leaving Sandrige Pier, 
named Rover. Please make inquiries." I at 
once telegraphed the news of the dog's return to 
the duke, and received the following telegram in 
reply : — ' 



VICTORIA. — MELBOUBNE. 97 

" I shall be in Auckland' by eighth December. 
Bring Rover if you get there ; if not, send him 
there by Californian Mail. Alfred." 

The next day I received this letter : — 

"Union Club, Sydney, 19th November, 1870. 

" My dear Bandmann^ — I telegraphed to Stand- 
ish to send the dog down by the mail leaving here 
on the 30th, to Auckland, but if you are to be 
there in December you had better bring him your- 
self. He jumped overboard a few miles after we 
had started, but they did not tell me till half an 
hour afterward. 

"Jessie is a mamma of seven, and two will be left 
with Mrs. Henfrie, of Alfred House, for you, who 
has offered to look after them, and you can give 
her your directions. 

" I leave for New Caledonia to-morrow and will 
be at Auckland not later than the 8th December. 
Try to be there. With kind regards to Mrs. 
Bandmann, I remain, yours truly, 

" Alfred." 

I did as the duke wished and took Rover with 
me to Auckland in December, where he was 
again united to Jessie, and remained quite happy 
in the keeping of his royal master. But I have 
never been quite able to understand the remarka- 
ble part performed by Rover on this occasion, for 
he swam for miles in Hobson Bay, which was fear- 
fully turbulent at the time and teems with sharks. 



98 AN ACT OB'S TOUR. 

Rover, however, had wonderful sagacity, and, 
I am sure, when he returned, wet and dirty, he 
meant, so far as he was able by barks and kisses, 
to tell me all about it. On one of the days subse- 
quently, in which I saw Rover together with Jessie 
in the duke's company at Auckland, I seemed to 
see in the dog's eyes a look of deepened intelli- 
gence and half-regretful love, as though in such 
mute language he did his best to say : — 

" You know, my dear old master, I was always 
very happy with you, and I did n't want another 
master at all, not even though a royal duke. I 
did my best to show you this by risking my life a 
thousand times for your sake in Hobson Bay, but 
you brought me back to the duke and now I mean 
to stay, for a dog ought to respect a duke, and 
he 's very kind, you know ; and then besides, after 
a doggish fashion, I love Jessie dearly. Although 
at first I didn't like at all the way in which she 
seemed to completely forget you and caress her 
new master. Prince Alfred, still, you know (and 
here Rover gave a most knowing wink), she 's only 
done just what one might expect a dog with a 
feminine soul to do. 'T was natural for her to love 
one who is a duke and a prince best, but 't was 
different with me ; however, she 's my sister and 
it's for me to hide her faults. I 've forgiven her 
and we are very happy together now, for the 
duke 's a right good master." 

And Rover, as though it were by volition and 
actual determination on his part, never afterward 



VICTORIA. — MELBOUBNE. 99 

took any more notice of me than of a stranger, 
and was, the last time I heard of him, still with 
Jessie in the duke's household, and a great 
favorite with the other dogs and much admired 
by men. 

But to speak once more of my second visit, 
any account of which would be incomplete 
were I not to refer to the hearty welcome and 
generous hospitality that were shown to me by 
the members of the German Turn Verein, from 
whom I received the following : — 

" Melbourne German Turn Verein, 
'• 71 Latrobe Street, East, October 5, 1881. 

" Dear Sir^ — Ours is the largest society, and 
the only German one, in Melbourne. We possess 
our own hall ; and the committee have charged 
me with the pleasant duty to give you a hearty 
welcome. We are proud to have a countryman 
amongst us whose artistic reputation is world- 
wide, and who is an honor to our country and 
to our art. 

"The Turn Verein Association, which celebrates 
every Sunday after good old German fashion, 
devoting the evening to good music and good 
singing, and so entertaining its members in the 
best manner, would consider it an honor if you 
would accept their invitation to be among them 
next Sunday, or the following, to enjoy an evening 
in their society. 

" lu the name of the committee, 

"W. Wiesbaden, Secretary y 



100 AN AG TOE' 8 TOUR. 

I accepted this invitation, and shall never forget 
the delightful season I passed with the glorious 
fraternity of the Turn Verein. It afforded a roost 
remarkable exception to the monotony of Mel- 
bourne Sundays, for on the occasion of my second 
visit there was no gallant royal duke to drop in 
for dinner and loo, and, alas ! dear Charles Mathews 
was no more. The souls of the members of the 
association were brimful of goodwill toward me, 
and the music and singing were fine in the 
extreme. But their reception of me as a prince 
among them, at their clubhouse, did not fully 
satisfy their great desire to do me honor, for after 
I had returned to the Oriental, where I had taken 
up my quarters, the singing section of the Turn 
Verein came along and serenaded me. I invited 
them inside the hotel and acknowledged the honor; 
but by that time, to my yet greater surprise, the 
band had arrived outside, and were, by the most 
pleasing melodies, repeating the compliment, and 
it was welluigh midnight before the goodwill of 
the members of the Turn Verein had expressed 
itself to their full satisfaction ; and they left me 
to retire to rest amid sweet, dying melodies, and 
with a soul deeply and gratefully impressed by the 
many proofs they had given of their admiration, 
respect, and good-wishes. 



CHAPTER VII. — Australia. 

SOUTH AUSTRALIA. — ADELAIDE. 

" For I am nothing, if not critical." 

— Othello, Act it, sc. 1. 
"Tlioii canst not see one wrinkle in my brow; 
Mine eyes are gray ami bright and quick in turning; 
My beauty as the spring doth yearly grow; 
My flesh is soft and plump, my marrow burning; 
My smooth, moist hand, were it with thy hand felt. 
Would in thy palm dissolve, or seem to melt." 

— Venus and Adonis. 

Old friends — Von Treue — Sir James and Lady Edith Fergusson — 
Dramatic critics — John Oxenford, Tom Taylor, and Mr. Mowbry 
Morris — Ailelaide, a provincial town — 3Iore liquor is drunk than 
water — The resources and possibilities of the counti-y — The Sohloquy 
and OpheUa scenes from Hamlet in German — The Botanical Gardens 
— Some of the company afraid of the climate of India, and i-efuse to 
go — A young lady who thought she resembled the Venus of Milo or 
the Venus de' Medici — New members of the company — Captain 
Sharland sings "The Vagabond." 

On November 2, 1881, I followed my company, 
wdiicli had gone on a few days before to Adelaide, 
South Australia. I sailed on the Orient steamer 
Chimbaroza, a large, fine vessel, but, as I thought, 
poorly provisioned, the principal food being frozen 
meat. This seemed to me folly where there is 
such a quantity of good fresh meat to be had. 
The journey only takes forty-eight hours by a 
large vessel and fifty-six by a smaller one. 

I arrived at Adelaide on Friday and opened 
on Saturday evening in Narcisse. My repertoire 
throughout all this tour was, in fact: Narcisse, 
Othello, Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice, Romeo 



102 AN- ACTOB'S TOUR. 



and Juliet, Macbeth, Richard III, Much Ado About 
Nothing, As You Like It, Richelieu, The Lady of 
Lyons, The Corsican Brothers; and the following 
pieces in which Miss Beaudet greatly excelled, 
raising each performance to a very high standard 
of dramatic art: East Lynne, A Woman of the 
People, Leah, the Forsaken, Camille, and The 
Hunchback. 

I was welcomed back by a full house, and met 
ray old friend Von Treue, the German consul, and 
a right good fellow. On my former visit to 
Adelaide I had the pleasure of meeting frequently 
Sir James Fergusson, the former governor, who, with 
the late Lady Edith Fergusson, made our stay very 
pleasant. It was on that occasion that I also met 
Mr. Mowbry Morris, then acting as a third-rate 
equery to his excellency, and eating very humble 
pie indeed. A few years later he came to London, 
and as he was the son of his father, the proprietors 
of the Times were anxious to do something for 
their late trusty servant's son. They made him, well, 
— or shall I say gave him the name? — a dramatic 
critic ! I could not help smiling when I met 
Mowbry after this nomination — how he spread 
his plumes ! He was the most humble, modest, 
genial fellow before, but now there was no talking 
to him. Poor fellow ! he had to show in some 
way, and this was the only way open to him, the 
dignity of his office. When one remembers such 
giants of intellect as my late friends, John Oxen- 
ford and Tom Taylor, who used to write dramatic 



So UTII A US TliA LI A. — ADELA IDE. 103 

criticisms for that leviathan of the English press, 
the London Times, and then thinks of the pigmies 
who at the present day attempt the same task, 
a feeling of the sad falling,-<)ff in power is inevitable, 
and we cannot but regret that the public, whose 
taste is formed to no small extent by what they 
read in their favorite daily, should be left to the 
tender mercies of such as these ; but in the end, 
and the end won't be long in coming with these 
in office, the public will, no doubt, from sheer 
weariness of their weak twaddle, take to criticism 
on their own account, which will be an immense 
benefit alike to the theatrical profession and to 
themselves. 

Adelaide is, of all Australian towns at present, 
the most provincial. It has in recent years grown 
considerably and has now about sixty thousand 
inhabitants, but it is slow, dull, and without 
attractions. There is more liquor drunk in 
it than water, and the brain is hampered in 
its healthful activity, and the heart has lost all 
its finer sentiments and has sunk into a besotted- 
ness very unlovely to witness. Six months in the 
year Adelaide is unbearable on account of its 
dreadful dry heat, three months it rains, and the 
rest are the only endurable portion of the year. 
South Australia, nevertheless, has inducements 
for the ambitious; the colony is immensely rich, 
and only in its infancy. Give it time, and we 
shall be surprised by the full development of its 
resources ; enormous quantities of gold and silver 



104 AX ACTOR'S TOUR. 

lie buried beneath its soil. Up till now, only- 
wheat, iron, copper, and coal, have been cultivated ; 
but the time will come when South Australia will 
produce every agricultural and commercial com- 
modity in request throughout the civilized world. 
It will be one of the foremost manufacturing 
countries, and, together with Queensland, will 
spread its industry and commerce to Java, 
Malacca, Siam, India, and the entire Eastern 
world, as it already has pushed forward to Port 
Darwin, and soon will reach Cape Ontario. 

There are a good many Germans in Adelaide, 
and on my former visit they gave me a public 
banquet, and honored me with an address, the 
chair, on the occasion, being occupied by Consul 
Von Treue. 

"A kinder gentleman treads not the earth." 

Anxious to shoAV them that I had not forgotten 
old favors, and that, so far as I was able, I desired 
to reciprocate their kindness, I played, at my 
benefit, the Soliloquy and Ophelia scenes from 
Hamlet in German, for which Miss Beaudet 
studied the part most carefully, and, having 
been coached by me in the language, she played 
it in a masterly manner. So pure was her 
elocution that the Germans did n't know that 
she was an alien. 

In Adelaide, as indeed we have found to be the 
case in all Australian cities, a great point of 
attraction is the Botanical Gardens. Those here. 



so UTH A USTBALIA. — ADELAIDE. lOa 

in size, and the quality of their plants and flowers, 
would certainly justify any city's pride. They 
lack the picturesque beaut}'' of those at Sydney 
because it is rare that a harbor like that which is 
Sydney's glory is to be found, and the gardens 
lie close to the harbor, and gain much from that 
position ; but everything that money and skill can 
do has been done for those in Adelaide. Many 
rare plants and flowers are found, and the large 
zoological section gives to them quite an extra 
grace. 

It was still early in the month of November that 
I found myself fairly ready to start with my 
company for India, when, to my surprise and 
disgust, four of my people — the first old man, 
the heavy leading man, the old woman, and the 
second juvenile — declined to go because they 
were afraid of the climate. It was rather late 
in the day to raise such objection, and I nearly 
found myself in a dilemma ; but a man who has 
his wits about him, and possesses a little insight 
into human nature, is never left in the lurch. After 
reason and persuasion were useless with them, I 
inserted an advertisement in the Adelaide daily 
papers for ladies and gentlemen willing to be 
taught the dramatic art and to accompany me to 
India. I had as many as forty applicants. So 
I advanced those who had j)layed second parts to 
the higher vacant positions in the company, and 
picked four new persons out of the applicants 
to fill their places. 



10(1 AN ACTOB'S TOUR. 

One of the two ladies I selected was a very 
handsome girl, and seemed to possess talent. She 
belonged to a very respectable family, and her 
parents said they were quite willing that she 
should go. But the mother never seemed to be at 
her ease about it, and when the girl left tlie pier 
to go on board the Indus, the steamer of the 
Peninsula and Oriental Line by which we 
sailed for Ceylon, the poor old woman swooned 
away. I could not quite understand this peculiar 
maternal behavior ; it seemed to me so contradic- 
tory from time to time, and more especially as 
I had used no particular persuasion, but rather 
consented to make a trial of the young lady's 
powers than anything else ; for the truth is, 
though I thought she had a certain amount of 
ability, many of the young ladies whose services 
I had to decline when I gave the appointment to 
her seemed to possess an equal amount, or more ; 
and those who did not impress me at all, never- 
theless told me that they would make admirable 
Lady Macbeths, Juliets, Ophelias, Women of the 
People, — and had I not a right to take them 
at their word? In short, one young lady even 
went so far as to ask: — 

"Am I not like the Venus of Milo, or, as 
some of my friends think, like the Venus de' 
Medici ? At least, am I not gifted with a perfect 
form, a figure of most symmetrical proportions, 
admirably carved features, significant expression, 
and have I not good elocutionary powers ? Mr. 



so UTH A US TBALIA. — A DEL AIDE. 107 

Bandmann, please, don't go by what I say ; judge 
for yourself ; only I think one who, like myself, 
resembles the Venus of any great master must be 
able to do, you know, a simple Lady Macbeth, 
Juliet, Ophelia, or Woman of the People. Try 
me, and I '11 soon show you where that Louise 
Beaudet will be." 

Now, of this young lady's " elocutionary 
powers" I hadn't the slightest doubt after a'll 
this ; but do my utmost I could n't see any strik- 
ing resemblance to the one famous Venus or to 
the other, nor even to Venus in any way as she 
shapes herself to my thought and imagination. 
But, putting all this down to my own mental 
obtuseness and perversity of vision, I very 
modestly said : — 

" But, young lady, supposing all that you say 
of yourself is true, don't you think that, after all, 
your place is in the studio, and not on the stage ? 
I think your forte is to be an artist's model." 

The look of the young lady I shall never 
forget, nor the subsequent deliverance of her 
" elocutionary powers." 

" You think so, Mr. Bandmann, do you ? Well, 
I think differently. A Venus worth a pin is 
not to be seen simply by one man, though 
he should be a great artist, and by the rest of 
the world in stone or canvas copies, but by 
humanity ; and to be gazed at and wondered at, by 
all, is my forte. 'T is nonsense to tell me that I am 
best fitted for the studio and the contemplation of 



108 AN A CTOIi' ,S TO UB. 

one man. I am touched with an enthusiasm for 
larger things than that, and so I intend to adopt 
the stage whether or not you think me fit for it. 
My chance will come, and the eyes of all will be 
enamored with that form that nature has blessed 
me with." 

What could I say to all this ? It would have 
been in vain to have told this young lady that not 
a'woman living but thinks at some time or other 
that she 's a perfect type of beauty, and that 
no woman exists that does not imagine herself, 
somewhere between eighteen and forty, and even 
later in life, a Venus of some sort or other, 
only some of them have the good sense to say 
nothing about it ; and as I did n't wish unneces- 
sarily to pain such a bright, clever, ambitious 
girl, I simply added, with no wish at all to wound 
her feelings, but to teach a lesson of modesty : — 

" Let us grant that you do resemble the Venus 
of Milo, or the Venus de' Medici, or any other 
Venus that you prefer, but even then I would 
.remind you in all seriousness that, since their 
part is a passive part, yours may be so likewise ; 
that the most perfect form, and even great beauty, 
is no sure test of qualification for the actress's 
work, or guaranty of success in high dramatic 
art. That depends on quite other qualities. A 
Lady Macbeth, an Ophelia, a Juliet, is not made 
by these, but by the quality of her inner life and 
soul, and her power to grasp and to live in, for 
the time being, the personality of another. A'"ou 
understand me, I hope ? " 



so UTII A USTBALIA. — ADELAIDE. 109 

•' I do, and I wish 3'^ou a good-morning, sir ! " said 
the youthful Venus, as she bounced out of the 
room. 

Need I say that all through this interview 
I saw how impossible it would be to make any- 
thing of this clever but conceited girl? 

She was beautiful in shape and form, indeed, 
but possessed of no more soul than a marble 
statue, and might with truth have said with 
Audrey in As You Like It: "I do not know 
what poetical is. Is it honest in deed and word? 
Is it a true thing ? " Her tongue was her only 
power, and that she could n't rightly use. She 
offered a great contrast in every way to the 
modesty and hesitancy of Louise Beaudet, whom 
she thought she could eclipse, and who has, with 
few of this girl's external attractions, effected so 
much. This girl confirmed me in the conviction 
that power and merit in women are measured 
by modesty no less than in men : — 

'' Jii the modesty of fearful duty 
I read as much, as from the rattUug tongue 
Of saucy and audacious eloquence."' 

I have since heard that the girl succeeded in 
getting on the stage, but was a miserable failure, 
and that the only notoriety she has ever attained 
is by a very "passive" method indeed, namely, 
by photography , that she has become the model 
of a certaui, not painter, or sculptor, but — 
photographer, who linds lier a useful addition in 



110 AN ACTORS TOUB. 

the composition of groups, and for photographs 
of unknown women represented in every con- 
ceivable costume : at times with very little, and 
sometimes with none — "figuring in the nude as 
an illustration of the beauty of health,'^ as Alice 
Comyns Carr speaks of Emma Lyon, the famous 
Lady Hamilton, as once doing. So far has the 
poor girl's resemblance to the Venus of Milo or 
the Venus de' Medici served her. 

But there were girls, amongst the twenty or so 
who offered their services to me, of a far different 
type to this young lady, and certainly with quite as 
much talent as the one I selected. But to return 
to her. "We had been out at sea a few days, when 
the mysterious transitions in her mother's emotions 
were seen in a new light. The young lady fell ill, 
and the doctor informed me that one of her lungs 
was absolutely gone and that the other was 
already seriously affected, and that she was in 
consumption. I cross-questioned the poor young 
lady to ascertain to what extent this had been 
known to her parents and herself before starting, 
and on my pressing her very hard I found out the 
whole truth. She had been ill for three years: 
her parents knew that she could not live and 
sent her away to die somewhere else, to save the 
funeral expenses, and the general inconvenience 
of such an event to the family ; hence her mother's 
remorse at parting from her. The case of this 
poor girl was the most cruel instance of parental 
cold-bloodedness and shameful heartlessness that 



.so UTH A US TBALIA. — ADELAIDE. 1 1 1 

I liave ever known. I was kind to her, and so 
were all the rest of the company, and I promised 
to keep her till I should hear from her parents. 
On arrival in Calcutta I wrote to the father, 
who was a well-to-do blacksmith, but received no 
reply. Further trouble was needless, for soon 
after the poor girl died, and we laid her dust to 
rest in that foreign land of burning suns to which 
the cruelty of her parents had banished her. 

Two of the other three new members of my 
company turned out fairly well, especially the 
woman to whom I taught the parts of the Queen 
in Hamlet and of Pompadour in Narcisse. She 
created quite an impression. My company was, 
in all, twelve strong, and after a most pleasant 
voyage of fifteen days' duration, we arrived at 
Point de Galle, Ceylon. 

Captain Sharland, in command of the Indus, 
is a most agreeable man, a very good fellow, 
indeed, but awfully fond of singing " The Vaga- 
bond," resting always on the last high note, a song 
which is easily possible to have too much of. 
However, every man has his weakness ; Captain 
Sharland's is " The Vagabond," selected, perhaps, 
because of his wandering life on the great waters. 
Save for this he is one of the most excellent 
fellows I ever met. 



CHAPTER VIII. — India. 

CEYLON. — MADRAS. 

" Corruption wins not more than honesty." 

— Henry VIII, Act m\sc. 2. 
•• Honor and policy, like unseverVl friends, 
I' the war do grow together." 

— Coriolanus, Act in, sc. 2. 
"If I lose mine honor, 
I lose myself." 

— Antony and Cleopatra, Act Hi, sc. 4. 
"For honor travels in a strait so narrow 
Where one but goes abreast." 

— Troilus and Cressida, Act Hi, sc. 3. 

Point de Galle — The character and the dress of the natives — The 
Cinnamon Gardens — Cocoanut-farms — Tlie New Year festival — 
Native jewelers — A terrific sea — Madras, a beautiful town — First 
experience of a pankhd — Newspapers — The clubhouse — Govern- 
ment House — A great banquet — A variety-show — One who wears 
a " Victoria Cross." 

We did not stay long at Point de Galle, as 
we were lucky enough to get there a day or two 
before the Pekin sailed for Madras, en route for 
Calcutta, and we determined to proceed in that 
steamer. As a rule, the Australian steamers for 
Calcutta have to lay over in Galle ten days, but 
on this occasion the Indus was before her time 
in arriving, and the Pekin behind her time in 
starting, and this twofold want of punctuality 
considerably furthered the speedy accomplishment 
of our journey. 

We, however, made good use of our time to see 
what we could of the neighborhood of Galle, and 



CE YL OX. — 21AlJltAS. 113 

of the island and people of Ce3-lon. But our 
experiences were not very happy. Passing along 
the street, our eyes were attracted by the hand- 
some appearance of some, as we supposed, silver- 
mounted, ebony canes. We purchased several, 
paying rather a high price for our staffs, but, 
alas ! we discovered afterward they were ordinary 
wood only, blackened over. 

The manner of dressing customary with the 
men, and which makes them so closely resemble 
women in appearance, struck us as something 
very odd. They wear their hair, usually of the 
blackest hue, very long, and adorned with large 
tortoise-shell combs, and many of them have very 
beautiful faces. 

We drove up to the Cinnamon Gardens, which 
are very charming, stopping on the way at a 
cocoanut-farm, where we were invited to join 
in the sports, it being the natives' New Year 
festival. We did so, and greatly enjoyed our- 
selves. They brought us cocoanuts fresh cut 
from the trees, from wliich we drank the delicious 
milk. On our way back the driver stopped at 
a prominent citizen's house, and asked him to 
give us some ciiniamon-oil. 

During another excursion Miss Beaudet was 
induced to buy some sapphires. Three large 
ones were shown to her, for which the jeweler 
asked the sum of seventy -five pounds, declar- 
ing that they were worth a hundred and fifty 
j)0unds, and said he was willing, in proof 



114 ANAGTOH'S TOUB. 

of the truth of his statement, to give a receipt for 
that amount. Fortunately, however, for Miss 
Beaudet, she had left all her money with the 
purser on board. So the diamond merchant and 
dealer in precious stones, as he called himself, 
was asked to come on board for payment. This 
he consented to do, and soon after our return 
he put in his appearance. But the purser (what 
wise and canny persons these pursers on board 
ship are !) asked, before he would part with so 
much money : — 

" What is it for ? " He knew that Miss Beaudet 
was a stranger to Ceylon, and that the natives are 
great thieves. 

"For brilliant sapphires, wonderfully beautiful 
stones," answered the man. 

" I doubt not," said the purser ; " but come, my 
good man, I know a sapphire when I see it. Let 
me look at them." 

Without the slightest hesitation, for the man 
had grown old in swindling and knew that that 
would instantly condemn him, he produced the 
jewels. 

"Now, purser," said Miss Beaudet, "tell us 
your opinion of these jewels. Have I a bargain ? " 

The purser had no sooner taken them in his 
hand and glanced at them than he broke into 
a loud laugh that rang through the great saloon 
in which we were sitting. 

" It 's lucky," said he, " that I refused to 
give you any money when you went on shore. 



CE YL OX. — MADBA8. 115 

Miss Beaudet, for if you had transacted much 
business with the natives on the principle 
on which you have entered on this, you woukl 
have been bankrupt, maybe, before you left 
Ceylon. This man — thief rather, I ought to say 
, — has endeavored to swindle you out of at least 
sixty-five pounds for these jewels ; at the utmost, 
they are not worth more than ten pounds in 
CeyloUo Leave this fellow to me." 

We did so, and the purser got Miss Beaudet 
out of the scrape wonderfully well. He took 
the pseudo-jeweler aside and gave him, as he said 
afterward, " a bit of his mind," and the result 
was that she got the sapphires for ten pounds; 
and the man was glad, after he saw the turn 
events had taken by the purser's interference on 
her behalf, to end the transaction in this way. 

The streets of Galle were literally pestered with 
dirty children. The natives crowded around us 
with their various wares. They even surrounded 
our ship in small boats, and everywhere we went 
we were met with the cry : " Sab, want some 
change ? Change I you five pounds ? " But 
we did n't want any change ; our money, thank 
heaven ! was still safely iii our cautious purser's 
keeping, and we wish it could always have 
remained there. Experience makes us wondrous 
wise. 

The carriages of the town are very pretty, drawn 
by Burmese ponies, and can be hired most reason- 
ably ; a drive all round the town costs only eight 
annas (twenty-five cents). 



116 AX ACTOR'S TOUB. 



But the time came for the Pekin to sail, and 
I had too little time during this visit to see 
the glories of Ceylon, the paradise of Hindu 
mythology : though of those " natural beauties," 
the inhabitants, I had seen quite enough. 

It is a two-and-a-half days' voyage to Madras, 
where I also made a brief stay. It was early 
morning when I arrived there, a terrific sea 
was on, and it seemed impossible to land. The 
breakwater had been completely washed away by 
a cyclone a few weeks before, and in the harbor it 
was almost as tempestuous as in the open sea. At 
last, however, we anchored, and in time, by means 
of wretched little Madras boats, and after risking 
our lives, to our thinking, a dozen times, we got 
near the shore. But even then we could not 
land without the assistance of the coolies, who 
carried the gentlemen on their backs and the 
ladies in chairs to the land. Whether by pure 
accident, or purposely as a practical joke, or by 
the sheer overwhelming character of his burden, 
I can't say, but a coolie gave a very stout 
gentleman, who had journeyed with us from 
Ce3don (who ever journeyed anywhere without 
a very stout gentleman ? and who is there 
that does not remember that some evil always 
befell him in particular, as though fate, knowing 
his proverbial good-nature, took a delight in teas- 
ing him ?), a thorough ducking, and when at last 
he got to land he came on his hands and knees, 
looking, in his drenched, tight-fitting mackintosh, 



CEYLOX. — MADBAS. 117 

for all the world more like a gigantic seal emerg- 
ing from the sea than a human being. 

" This fellow, methinks, hath no drowning-mark upon him: 
His complexion is perfect gallows." 

To see the town of Madras necessitates a drive 
of six miles, and it was so tremendously hot 
beneath the burning sun that before we got there 
we half envied the " stout gentleman " his sea-bath. 
On reaching the town I made at once for the 
Mount Royal Hotel, where I put up for a couple 
of days. Madras is a beautiful town, with most 
lovely trees, and the drives are exquisite, especially 
the beach drive. 

Here I had my first experience of sleeping 
under a pankhd. The bed was hard, with no 
pillow, and but one sheet for covering, and the 
night was cool, yet allowing for all that, I found 
that sleeping under a pankha pulled by coolies is 
a very pleasant arrangement, and often in India 
a very necessary protection from the mosquitoes 
that swarm by thousands. The food served to 
us was wretched, except the khurdi (curry). The 
l^apers of INIadras, however, are excellent, especially 
the Times and the Mail, as though the journalists, 
knowing how poor the diet is for the body, some- 
how hoped to make up for the deficiency by 
"a feast of reason and a flow of soul." The 
clubhouse is a fine building. 

I went one evening to the Government 
House expecting to hear a concert, announced 



118 AX ACTOB'S TOUB. 

to be given by Mr. Simmonson and his daugh- 
ters, who had journeyed with us from Ade- 
laide. The concert, however, did not come off, 
as a big dinner was previously arranged to be 
given to two hundred prominent gentlemen of 
Madras and the neighborhood. After the dinner 
was over, instead of the usual "speechifying," 
which is too often a dull performance, in which 
everybody trying to say smart things ends in say- 
ing the most trite and stupid things imaginable, 
except, perhaps, in Ireland, where I am told by 
a friend that " after-dinner speeches are even 
better than the rarest old Jamieson " (though 
I imagine that " the rarest old Jamieson " is in 
reality the superlative to which the " better after- 
dinner speeches " is the comparative), we were 
entertained by the most wonderful conjuring- 
geniuses I ever met. It was quite marvelous 
to see how docile and companionable snakes 
become, even the famous cohra de capello (what 
a wonderful head it has !), beneath a magic spell. 
The next day we joined the Pekin for Calcutta. 
On board I met dear old Hartigan, who is now 
custodian of the high court of Calcutta, one of 
the brave, old soldiers who fought in the Indian 
Mutiny. Never shall I forget the veteran 
warrior's look as he told me (O how his eye 
flashed, as if lit up again beneath the fire of 
battle ! and as if he felt now, as ever, " England 
expects every man to do his duty ! " and which, 
though simple, has been his lifelong creed, and 



CE YL OX. — MADRAS. 119 

gloriously exemplified by hira) that on one occa- 
sion he was attacked by six natives, and had to 
fight them all, naked, single-handed, with a sabre 
wrested from one of them. The six fell before 
his prowess, and for this he received the " Victoria 
Cross," which the old man wears proudly enough ; 
but it is the pride in which there is the sweet, 
bashful modesty and delicious simple-heartedness 
of the little child that feels somehow, though it 
scarcely knows how, or cares to ask why, when any- 
thing exceptional has come to be its own more than 
another's, that it is a lovely, priceless thing it has 
got, and is glad on account of it, but without an}'' 
vanity or boastfulness whatsoever. I have seldom 
met so great a man so modest as old Hartigan ; 
but I have observed it is somehow, and in 
some degree always, the way with men who, like 
him, have stood face to face with the king of 
terrors, — Death, — and who, for duty's sake, hold 
not their lives dear unto themselves, but would, 
if need be, unhesitatingly sacrifice it for their 
country's good and glory. Hartigan is a true, 
modern Achilles. 

" By how much unexpected, by so much 
We must awake eudeavor for defence; 
For courage mounteth with occasion." 

"I dare do all that may become a man; 
Who dares do more is none." 

From Madras to Calcutta is a voyage of two 
and a half days. 



CHAPTER IX.— India. 

CALCUTTA. — I. 

" And, in the spiced Indian air." 

— Midsummer Night's Dream, Act ii, sc. 2. 
" The setting sun, and music at the close. 
As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last." 

— Richard II, Act ii, sc. 1. 

The Ganges — The city a wonderland of Oriental magniflcence — The 
houses — The metas — T\\Q drive along the Maidan — All nationali- 
ties represented — The Eden Garden— Sir Ashley Eden — Hindu 

- servants — The theatres — The Corinthian — Christmas eve in Cal- 
cutta—The Great Eastern Hotel — Their excellencies, the Marquis 
and Marchioness of Ripon — Lord Lytton — Lord William Beresford 
and his brother Charlie — A little dinner-party at which the Duie of 
Edinburgh provided the music — The Calcutta seasou — Kajahs and 
maharajaha — The enormous Avealth of the Maharajah of Darbungha 

— His residence, manners, and character — The Cooch Behar — The 
Woodlands — The love of Shakespeare amongst the Hindus — The 
works of the Bard prized next to the Zendavesta, the Vedas, the 
Koran, or the Bible — The Hindus learn English from Shakespeare 

— The nature of the Hindus — The Brahmo Somaj — Babu Keshub 
Chunder Sen — Tribute to his character, spirit, and Avork. 

A PECULIAR impression came over me on Sun- 
day, December 18, as we steamed np the holy- 
river Ganges, the stream so dearly loved by every 
true Hindu, and about which the fervent imagi- 
nation of his race has woven a thousand beautiful 
myths, and its no less fervent piety has regarded, 
for over forty long centuries, as one of the chief 
objects of rapturous devotion. We reached Cal- 
cutta about three o'clock in the afternoon ; it was 
tolerably hot, but not so hot as I expected, by any 
means, for we could walk the streets most com- 
fortably, even in the sun. 



CALCUTTA. — I. 121 



The first impression of Calcutta is most 
dazzling. The city is a perfect wonderland of 
Oriental magnificence and grandeur. There are 
rows on rows of houses heavily built, of a rough, 
stony, massive appearance, without windows or 
doors to be seen, and entirely surrounded by 
elaborate balconies which lead into the interiors, 
and every liouse completely walled in, with one 
or two grand portals through which you gain an 
entrance. Sometimes two or three houses are 
enclosed within the same walls. A real Indian 
house is of four or five stories, and has a certain 
stately massiveness of appearance — but no win- 
dows, to prevent the glaring sun from penetrating 
into the rooms, necessary light being conveyed 
from the balcony. 

I was much impressed by the appearance of the 
water-carriers, or metas, as they are called, who 
are perfectly naked, as all coolies are, with the 
exception of a band around their loins, and who 
were most energetically engaged in their particu- 
lar work. These metas carry in large leathern 
bags, each of which holds about three or four 
buckets of water, the water-supply to every house 
in the city, and also water the streets, which 
keeps them cool and pleasant. At five o'clock, 
both morning and evening, these fellows sprinkle 
the drives of Calcutta all along the Maidan up to 
the Zoo and back again to the Eden Garden. 
Thousands of coolies are employed in this work, 
and it is wonderful with what alacrity and quick- 



122 AN ACTOR'S TOUR. 

ness it is done. The water is conveyed along the 
entire roads by means of narrow canals, so that 
they have it ready to hand, and the refreshing 
odor this spreads out is most exquisite. Nowhere 
else in the world is there an equal sight to be 
enjoyed in the afternoon as the drive along the 
Maidan. The road stretches from six to eight 
miles ; on one side a row of palaces, on the other 
the Maidan Park, from which the drive takes its 
name. Carriages crowd upon carriages, the luxury 
and beauty of many of them greatly surpassing 
the most fashionable turnouts in the Champs 
Elysees in Paris, Unter den Linden in Berlin, 
the Prater in Vienna, Rotten Row in London, or 
Central Park in New York. Here one meets with 
vehicles of every conceivable shape, size, lieight, 
and beauty of design, decorated with an infinite 
variety of arms and pedigrees, drawn by handsome 
" fiery-footed " Arabian steeds, and attended by a 
host of coachmen, grooms, and lackeys of every 
nationality, complexion, and livery. A most mar- 
velous panorama passes before you : crowds of car- 
riages on your left, and multitudes of mounted 
horsemen and horsewomen on your right. Down- 
ward along the Maidan it is the custom to 
drive fast; upward slow. Here in these hundreds, 
nay thousands, of vehicles of every description, 
one sees prince and merchant, maharajah and 
babu, Jew and Christian, Moslem and Hindu, 
Chinese and Japanese, Parsees and Siamese, all 
mixed together in a motley, gorgeous magnificence 



CALCUTTA. — I. 123 



of color, costume, and luxury. In the distance 
strains of the moist melodious music invite you, 
and as you draw near it, you halt close to the 
Eden Garden (nan:ed after Sir Ashley Eden, the 
late lieutenant-governor of Bengal), and you alight 
to have a stroll in these beautiful tropical grounds, 
a wonderland of flora and perfmnes, illuminated 
by electric lights, and where a fine band of music 
plays every evening from eight to twelve pieces, 
to the immense enjoyment of the assembled 
crowds. The concert begins punctually at six 
o'clock and lasts exactly one hour. As you look 
around and see these long lines of carriages, four, 
sometimes even six, abreast, in the midst of which 
you detect that of the viceroy, preceded by out- 
riders and accompanied by a numerous escort 
of splendid Sepoys and a swarm of servants, 
who are busy, as their horses' tails, in the en- 
deavor to keep off the myriads of teasing 
insects from the fiery Arabian steeds: and then 
at the crowds who, by this time, have assembled 
in the Eden Garden : you find yourself in a most 
bewildering labyrinth of nationalities, and, do 
your utmost, it is impossible to get out of it 
by a complete discovery of tlie national genus 
to which each belongs, or by an accurate classifi- 
cation of the manifold types that confront you. 
You will detect the European, the Eurasian, the 
Hindu, the Arab, the Singalese, the Burmese, the 
Siamese, the Malay, the Albanian, the Circassian, 
the Parsee, the Turk, the Chinese, tlie Japanese, 



124 AN ACTOIi'S TOUM. 

the Zulu, the Ethiopian ; but still, types will 
remain to tax your thought and to surprise 
your ethnology. 

Seated, or walking up and down the promenades 
of the Eden Garden for exercise, with their chil- 
dren dressed according to their particular national 
costumes, and playing their national games, some 
with and some without their ayah^ while the 
sweet melodies of the band flood the cool, per- 
fumed evening air, and plants and flowers of 
every kind and hue blossom around, you behold 
representatives of every people of the world 
rejoicing in a common happiness, and producing 
an impression upon the senses at once so dazzling 
and fairy-like that it is wellnigh impossible to 
believe it a reality, or to convince yourself that 
you are not, all the while, wandering in some 
delicious dreamland, or, in an imaginative way, 
simply moving among scenes of the Arabian 
Nights. Certainly, never before (nor since) did I 
behold such glories amid the gathering shadows of 
departing day, and I remember with what fresh 
beauty and vividness the scene between Lorenzo 
and Jessica, in The Merchant of Venice, rose 
before my mind, and I found myself uttering 
almost aloud the words of both : — 

" Lorenzo. In such a night as this, 

When the sweet Avind did gently kiss the trees. 
And they did make no noise; in such a night, 
Troilus, metliinks, mounted the Trojan walls, 
And sigh'd his soul toward the Grecian tents. 
Where Cressid lay that night. 



CALCUTTA. — I. 125 



" Jessica. In such a night, 

Did Thisbe fearfully o'ertrip the dew ; 
And saw the lion's shadow ere himself, 
And ran dismay'd away. 

" Lor. In such a night, 

Stood Dido with a willow in her hand, 
Upon the wild sea-banks, and wav'd her love 
To come again to Carthage. 

" Jes. In such a night, 

Medea gather'd the enchanted herbs 
That did renew old ^Eson. 

" Lor. In such a night, 

Did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew : 
And with an unthrift love did run from Venice, 
As far as Belmont. 

" Jes. And in such a night. 

Did young Lorenzo swear he lov'd her well ; 
Stealing her soul with many vows of faith. 
And ne'er a true one. 

" Lor. And in such a night. 

Did i^rettj^ Jessica, like a little shrew. 
Slander her love, and he forgave it her." 



' How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! 
Here we will sit, and let tlie sounds of music 
Creep in our ears ; soft stillness, and the night, 
Become the touclies of sweet harmony."' 

At seven o'clock you drive home, and take 
the bath which awaits you. Your evening-dress 
will be laid out, even to the studs in your 
shirt : for, if you are in moderate circumstances 
you will have six; if rich, about twenty-four; if 
a rajah, or in society and wealth of a rajah's 



126 AN' ACTOR'S TOUB. 

status, you will have about a hundred, servants. 
Even the poor white man cannot get on beneath 
the burning suns of India without at least a 
couple of them. Servants are inevitable, and 
several, often many, a necessity ; for one will not 
do another's work. Your hoy will not clean your 
boots or carry your dirty water, and your size will 
not open or shut your carriage -door. Conse- 
quently you must have a groom, a size, a meta, 
a cook, a hidmeghar (steward), and a boy, if you 
wish to get on passably well. Each understands 
the duties of the other, and each knows his sta- 
tion and most persistently keeps it. The boy is 
the head-servant and orders all the others to their 
duties, or perhaps I ought to write duty, for each 
limits his toil to the minimum, and, since he 
cannot do less unless he does nothing at all, he 
does some one thing. The boys, as a rule, are 
Moslems, and so are the sizes, the cooks, and the 
grooms. The metas, who discharge the lowest 
and meanest duties, are Pariahs. Dinner is 
prepared at eight o'clock, and at nine the 
theatres open. 

The theatres are lofty buildings with only one 
gallery, and have a dress circle, stalls, and gener- 
ally a considerable number of private boxes. 
The stalls and dress circle are four or five rupees 
(two dollars or two dollars and a half), and the 
private boxes are from twenty to forty rupees 
(from ten to twenty dollars). I have received as 
much as one hundred and fifty ruj)ees (seventy- 



CALCUTTA. — /. 127 

five dollars) for one private box, and frequently 
seventy-five rupees (thirty-seven dollars and a 
half). 

The first few days in Calcutta were spent in 
preparation for opening at the Corinthian Theatre, 
the largest and grandest in the city. The place 
was crowded, even more than usual, for thousands 
of visitors had swarmed in for the Christmas 
festivities. I had little leisure, but I found time, 
in the intervals of coaching the new members 
of my company and necessar}^ rehearsals, to join 
to some extent in the many festive gatherings of 
the season. I was present at the Great Eastern 
Hotel during a grand illumination on Christmas 
eve, which Sir Ashley Eden honored by his 
presence. I was introduced to him. The scene 
was most imposing, and there was immense cheer- 
ing by the natives as Sir Ashley Eden and his 
suite and the numerous guests passed into the 
banqueting-hall. The appearance of the Hindu 
waiters was very charming as, dressed in pure 
white muslin with crimson turbans on their heads 
and a band of the same color round their loins, 
they ranged themselves on either side of the way 
along which the procession of the lieutenant- 
governor and the guests passed, all of them 
crying, " Salam ! salam ! " 

The Great Eastern Hotel is the largest institu- 
tion of its kind in India. It combines with the 
hotel proper an establishment where you can get 
every conceivable article from a pin' to an anchor, 



128 A^ ACrOB'S TOUB. 



from cheese to pork, from a sponge-cake to every 
kind of bread in the art of bakery ; indeed, 
anything from a white mouse to (shall I say?) 
a white elephant. 

Later on the same evening, December 24, 1881, 
I opened at the Corinthian Theatre, on which 
occasion I played Narcisse. We had a good 
house ; the receipts amounted to over two thou- 
sand rupees (one thousand dollars). The success 
of the play was grand and decisive ; the entire Cal- 
cutta press was loud in our praise. The next play 
taken was Dead or Alive, and the third Hamlet. 
This was the largest house ever assembled inside of 
a Hindu theatre, and the success was so great that 
the Marchioness of Ripon, the wife of the viceroy, 
after the third performance, at which she had been 
present, sent me the following letter, asking me 
to repeat the same play, as she was anxious to see 
it again : — 

"Military Secret akt to the Viceroy. 
" Government House, Calcutta, January 5, 1882. 

"Lord William Beresford presents his compli- 
ments to Mr. Bandmann, and begs to inform him 
that her excellency, the Marchioness of Ripon, has 
expressed a wish to see Hamlet repeated by his 
company, and the day that her excellency would 
like to attend will be Tuesday, January 10. 
Please state if this date is convenient, and if so 
the entertainment can be advertised as under the 
patronage and presence of their excellencies." 



CALCUTTA, — ]. 12i) 



I complied with her excellency's request, which 
was tantamount to a viceregal command, as his 
excellency, the Marquis of Ripon, has never been 
seen in a theatre since the time he embraced 
Catholicism. I repeated Hamlet on the day 
specified to a house so crowded that days before 
seats were sold at a premium of ten and twenty 
rupees. 

Lord William Beresford, better known as Lord 
" Bill " (as he is familiarly called in Calcutta), 
is private secretary to the viceroy. He has been 
filling that position ever since Lord Lytton held 
that ofiice, and it was somewhat unfortunate for 
me that that noble peer was not still at the helm 
of Hindu affairs. I should have been socially 
well treated by his lordship, as I was an intimate 
friend of his late father, with whom I spent many 
weeks at Knebworth, and from whom I received 
upward of a hundred letters, which I still have 
by me. It was my appearance as Narcisse, in 
London, that brought Lord Lytton out again, 
and, after twenty years' silence, induced liim to 
write The Rightful Heir. 

Well, Lord Bill is a good fellow, and always 
willing to do a kindness to a professional man. 
He is himself a sort of modern Thespis, for 
whenever the court goes to Simla, which is the 
residence of the viceroy during the summer 
months, — a most beautiful spot, at an elevation 
of ten thousand feet, in the Himalayas, — he 
arranges all the theatrical amusements and tlie 



130 AN ACTOB'S TOUtt. 

entire programme of the summer sports. Lord 
Bill has a liking for me on account of my friend- 
ship with his brother Charlie, who was a middy 
of the Galatea when the Duke of Edinburgh was 
in Australia, and who frequently came with the 
duke to dine with us. I remember how, on one 
occasion, Charlie seemed half to regret that he 
was not the eldest son of the Marquis of Water- 
ford. "If only I were," said he, "wouldn't I 
make the dollars fly ; but, confound it ! I 'm only 
third in that race." 

One evening the little dinner at my house 
included the Duke of Edinburgh, Eliot Yorke, 
Captain Haig, Charlie Fergusson (brother to Sir 
James Fergusson, now governor of Bombay), and 
Charlie Beresford. After dinner was over the 
duke whispered to me that he had provided a 
little music by way of surprise. Accordingly 
Andei'son, a fair pianist (who afterward married 
lima di Murska, and is now dead), in whom the 
duke had taken some interest, was introduced for 
the purpose of accompanying him on the piano ; 
for the duke's little surprise was to be more of 
his own fiddling, in respect to which none of those 
present were absolute strangers, and certainly, 
much as we respected the prince, not very passion- 
ate admirers. I shall n3ver forget the long faces 
of the boj^s, especially of Charlie Beresford, when 
that announcement was made. He had been the 
life and soul of the dinner-party, but now all 
changed with him, for he became quite morose. 



CALCUTTA. —I. 131 



His royal highness took to the fiddle, but Charlie, 
I am sorry to say, was not enchanted by its 
strains ; indeed, he never seemed fully to appre- 
ciate the musical talent of his friend, the duke, 
and least of all on this occasion. I could read 
in his face the lines of Richard II : — 

" How sour sweet music is, 
When time is broke, and no proportion kept." 

Slyly and noiselessly he got out on tlie balcony, 
and from there he soon disappeared and I saw 
him no more that evening. 

On the morrow, however, I met him, for I was 
invited by the duke to join him in pigeon-shoot- 
ing, and Charlie came up and winked at me as 
much as to say: "Don't split on me for last 
night, old fellow." 

Well, if Charlie Beresford didn't like music 
at that time, he sliowed in the late Egyptian War 
that he could make his enemies dance to his own 
peculiar style of fiddling, and won golden praises 
for himself in the din of battle. 

During my return visit to Calcutta, who should 
come there but Charlie himself, who, since he 
was accompanied by his wife, and now had so 
many additional responsibilities, obligations, and 
dignities resting upon him, from what he had at 
the time when lie was simply a middy on board 
the Galatea, I ought perhaps to call Lord Charles 
Beresford. However, the dear fellow was in no 
way changed, as the following letter shows : — 



132 AN ACT OB' 8 TOUB. 

" My dear Bandmann, — Thank you so much 
for your kind letter. I shall be delighted to see 
you again. We are just off on a round of visits ; 
but when I come back I shall come and see you, 
and we will talk of old times. 

" Yours very truly, 

"Charles Beeesfokd." 

Calcutta society has only one season in the 
year, and that is from the middle of December, 
the time when the court returns from Simla, till 
about the middle of March in the following year. 
During that period all India: that is, the white 
portion of the population, together with all the 
nobility of Bengal : comes to town. 

It is quite a spectacle to see one of these 
great, high-born rajahs make his entrSe with his 
retinue of several hundred courtiers, retainers, 
servants, and accompanied by bands of music. 
There are maharajahs who have as great power 
as the viceroy himself, and who would not budge 
a jot to do him superior homage. I may take, for 
instance, the Maharajah of Darbungha, a potentate 
who has enormous possessions in land, and an 
income of upward one hundred thousand rupees 
(fifty thousand dollars) per day, and who is 
considered one of the most wealthy men in 
India. He speaks English fluently, and received, 
as most of the rajahs and maharajahs do, his 
education under government supervision at the 
University of Calcutta. He is short, has a full 



CALCUTTA. — /. 133 



beard, comes seldom to town, always wears his 
maharajah's uniform, with turban-cap embroidered 
with pearls o£ enormous value. He has a beauti- 
ful mansion at No. 42, Chowringee, overlooking 
the Maidan. He took a great liking to me, and 
frequently asked me to come and see him. His 
reception of me was always, even from the first, 
anost cordial. I saw on his table a splendid 
edition of Knight's Shakespeare, and he chatted 
with me every time I met him upon that topic. 
What he liked most, of all my impersonations, 
was Shyiock. He invited me to dine with him, 
and was in every way most courteous and 
hospitable. 

Another of the maharajahs with whom I 
became acquainted, and from whom I received 
many indications of friendship, is the Cooch 
Behar, than whom there is no more intelligent, 
charming, and enlightened prince in India. He is 
a man of very different stamp from the Maharajah 
of Darbungha. No one would take him for a 
native of India; he dresses and lives like a 
European, and is married to a daughter of Babu 
Keshub Chunder Sen, the great theistic reformer, 
one of the noblest, most impressive, and in many 
ways most picturesque personalities, not only 
in the religious history of India, but of the entire 
world, and of whom I shall have more to say 
further on. 

I had many opportunities afforded me of meet- 
ing the Cooch Behar, and hold several interesting 



134 AN AGTOB'S TOUE. 

letters from him. He lives in a lovely palace 
called the Woodlands, close to the Zoological 
Gardens, Calcutta, and is deeply read in the poets 
and dramatists of ancient and modern times, 
being especially familiar with those of Italy, 
France, Germany, and England, and is, as might 
be imagined, a passionate lover of Shakespeare. 
In fact, the love of Shakesj)eare is inherent in the 
Hindu mind, or rather, it is an inevitable blossom- 
ing of inherent qualities and dispositions beneath 
the influence of European education, which all 
the higher classes in India now enjoy. First comes 
the Zendavesta and the Vedas ; then the Koran, 
with the Islamic section of the Hindus, and with 
a very few, who have completely embraced the- 
istic or Christian principles, the Bible ; while with 
others, certainly not a very numerous class, to 
whom religion is more a philosophy than a creed, 
all of these — the Zendavesta, the Vedas, the 
Koran, and the Bible — are equally studied and 
valued, their reverence being divided among 
them ; then — and it is so with those who belong 
to all these various schools of religious thought 
in India, and no matter to which they belong — 
comes Shakespeare. 

The Hindu learns his English through the 
study of the immortal Bard, and so, from the very 
earliest years, his devotion is kindled toward this 
supreme master of the drama, and he becomes to 
him in after-life "guide, philosopher, and friend." 
The Hindu is a proud and eloquent creature ; he 



CALCUTTA. — I. 135 



is full of form and dignity ; he likes grandeur and 
magnitude ; besides, lie loves poetry, and Shake- 
speare's sublime ideas and magnificent diction 
touch him to the quick. 

But it was my privilege, during my sojourn in 
Calcutta, to meet with one whose society had 
attractions for me beyond all others, whether 
natives or foreigners, and I shall ever regard 
my intimate, but all too brief, friendship with 
him as amongst the chief enjoyments of my 
life and my most sacred memories. I refer to 
Babu Keshub Chunder Sen, whose name I have 
already incidentally mentioned, and the news of 
whose recent death caused a thrill of sorrow that 
swept over the entire civilized world, and elicited 
from Eastern and Western peoples alike testi- 
monies to the greatness and beauty and holiness 
of his character and work, and the general admis- 
sion of irreparable loss, not only to India and the 
Hindus, but to the cause of progress everywhere. 
I am sensible that no words of mine can, even 
if that were necessary, sketch a complete portrait 
of this remarkable man, or shape for others a 
just and accurate estimate of his endeavors ; 
yet, regarding the time passed in his society as 
amongst the most precious and golden hours of 
my life, I cannot do other than pay my small 
tribute to the memory of a friend whose like, in 
many ways, I cannot hojje to see again. 

Babu Keshub Chunder Sen was the most 
learned and enlightened native in India: I may 



136 ANAOTOE'S TOUR. 

go further and say, in the entire Orient. He was 
the Solon of his count r}^, and took a leading part 
in all political, civil, social, and spiritual move- 
ments for the progressive enlightenment and 
welfare of the Hindus. With a grand, imposing, 
athletic figure, a noble bearing, he combined an 
expressive dignity which reminded one of the 
patrician Roman. He was fully six feet high, 
broad shouldered, deep chested, of slightly olive 
complexion, mild, eloquent eyes, firm, set lips, 
genial chin, black moustache, and long black 
hair, which hung carelessly over a well-developed 
forehead. The stamp of nobility was upon him, 
and he might without vainglory have said : — 

' ' Mislike me not for my complexion — 
The shadow'd lining of the burning sun, 
To whom I am a neighbor, and near bred. 
Bring me the fairest creature northward born, 
AVhere Phoebus' fire scarce thaws the icicles, 
And let us make incision for your love, 
To prove whose blood is reddest, his or mine." 

He was my heau ideal of an " Othello make-up," 
and I told him that I would bring his face on 
the stage when I should play that part. He 
laughed and came to see it (as he was never 
absent from any of ray Shakespearean impersona- 
tions). After the performance he came into my 
dressing-room, and spoke highly of the acting. 

" But what did you think of my make-up ? " 
I asked. 

" If it was meant for me," he answered, " I can 



CALCUTTA. — I. 137 



only say that I could not see myself in it, for I 
beheld a handsome man." But the Babu was too 
modest, for he certainly was the handsomest man 
I saw in India. 

As with most of the educated Hindus, Shake- 
speare was his favorite topic, and in that subject 
he was a perfect master. I have greatly benefited 
in frequent conversations by his transcendental 
expositions, and looked with pleasure into his 
inspiring, eloquent eyes, which sparkled with 
Oriental enthusiasm. 

He spoke the English language without the 
slightest accent, and he possessed that rarest of 
all gifts, the art of conversation. 

In his frequent lectures against Brahmanic 
fetichism, and in favor of the movement which 
he called the New Dispensation, he kept his 
audiences, composed of Europeans and educated 
natives, spellbound. He was versatile to a high 
degree, and could discuss any subject, showing 
a keen and penetrating understanding in all his 
views. 

In religion he was more Christian than 
Brahman : indeed, it may be said of him that he 
embraced Christianity, or something so much 
better than the popular and fashionable Christian- 
ity of our Western Christendom, that he attained 
a beauty in spirit and life that recalled to me, 
by his presence alone, in a way that no "Western 
type of Christian character has ever done, the 
image of the sweet and perfect humanity of the 



138 AN ACTORS TOUIi. 

Christ. I read the other day of a man iu 
Broughty Ferry who wrote to his clergyman, the 
Reverend Murray McCheyne, that he was con- 
verted " not by anything you have said, but by 
your look, sir, as you entered the pulpit." I can 
easily imagine that hundreds of conversions to 
the- principles of the New Dispensation must 
have been brought about in the same way and 
by that most powerful of all eloquence : the 
presence and look of a man of singular purity 
and sublimity of character, such as we know its 
inaugurator to have been. 

Yet, while in his spirit more Christian than 
anything else, he still adhered to many of the 
customs of his Hindu fellow-citizens, in dress, 
mode of life, and domestic matters ; and, perhaps, 
because he could not thereby have done so much 
good to the cause he had always in view, as he 
otherwise succeeded in doing, he never fully 
avowed the opinions of any one of the differing 
Christian sects, though I am sure he managed to 
get very near to the heart of Christ himself. The 
marriage of his daughter, at a very early age, to 
the Maharajah Cooch Behar, was considered by 
some of his friends in India, Europe, and America, 
as a very questionable step ; there can, however, 
be no doubt in the minds of those who knew 
him intimately, that in this, as in everything 
else, he was moved by the purest motives, abso- 
lutely free of that worldly and selfish policy 
that some wrongly have attributed to him. 



CALCUTTA.— I. 139 



He told me once : " I only desire to live long 
enough to be able to destroy the old fetich system, 
and lead my people to the enlightened religion 
of the New Dispensation," which is, in fact, only 
another word for Unitarianism. In this direction 
he was to a large extent successful, for Dalhousie's 
Institute was crowded to overflowing whenever 
he lectured. In the midst of his triumphs he was 
called to the great field of rest, where we all one 
day have to go. We shall see him no more, and 
I presume his mortal body was given over to that 
dismal spot on the Ganges, where it was burnt 
with sandal-wood, and where his relatives had 
to light the pile, and do the last honor to his 
remains. How many thousands must have been 
within the sombre, lofty walls ! How many 
hundreds of thousands must have Avept and 
sorrowed that day over their loss ! They may 
well weep, for with him departed the best and 
truest friend of the Hindus in recent times, and 
the stanchest adherent of the English crown. 
The Queen of England knew this well, and sent 
him a volume of the Prince Consort's Life, with 
her picture and autograph attached. Peace to 
his ashes, for he was a great and good man, and 
pushed India a century ahead ; while the Brahmo 
Somaj and the New Dispensation still remain to 
carry on his work, and to show to coming ages 
the immense influence of one man of great, divinely 
inspired genius, and, perhaps (who can tell?), 
to build a memorial to Babu Keshub Chunder 



140 AX ACTOR 8 TOUB. 

Sen, in India, no less beautiful and impressive 
than Cliristendom is to the influence of Christ. 

'• His life was gentle ; and the elements 
So mix'd in him, that Nature might stand up 
And say to all the world, This was a man ! " 



CHAPTER X. — India. 

CALCUTTA. — II. 

"I pray you let us satisfy our eyes 
With the memorials, and the things of fame, 
That do renown this city." 

— Twelfth Night, Act in, sc. 3. 

The exclusively Hindu theatres — Three thousand Hindus witness 
Othello and The Merchant of Venice — East Lynne: an incident in 
its performance — Leah, the Forsaken — The Marchioness of Ripon 
and Romeo and Juliet — AVhat a European can stand in the way 
of work — An Eurasian plays Dogberry — A midnight visit to the 
Burning Ghaut — The method of cremation as practised hy the 
Hindus — The miscalled "quarter of pleasure " — The Botanical 
and Zoological Gardens — "Old Grizzly" — The cobra de capello 
— The mongoose — Ko cobras in Calcutta — A bad joke — The 
character of the Hindus — New Year's day in Calcutta — Hindu 
hospitality — A babu's family bed — Hindu marriages — Hindu 
wives — The empalement of widows — The Hindus compared with 
the Chinese — Hindu men superior to the women — The ambition 
of the men to practise law — The fascination of the law court for 
the Hindus — Perjury the commonest crime in the country — Sir 
Henry De Witt, the chief justice of Ceylon — How an old judge 
of Copenhagen got at the truth — The ways of a Hindu pleader— 
Police proceedings with suspects — Hindu servants — A Bengal 
judge and his trusted servant — Personal experiences with Hindu 
servants — Court-life in Calcutta — The children's garden-party — 
The hotels. 

It is a pleasure beyond description to see the 
natives of India enjoying a Shakespearean per- 
formance; the intelligence and enthusiasm they 
evince far exceed that of any European audi- 
ence with which I am acquainted, and I have 
performed in most of the great cities of Germany, 
England, and America. After playing all the 
rounds of Shakespearean characters, — in some 
plays taking, for instance, the part of Othello 



142 AX ACTOR'S TOUIi. 

on one or several nights, and then that of lago 
at one or more performances of the same play, 
at the Corinthian, — I consented, in compliance 
with a special request, to play for a few niglits 
in the exclusively Hindu theatres. I gave them 
the choice of my whole repertoire, and they 
chose Othello and The Merchant of Venice. 
It was a sight of indescribable interest to behold 
three thousand black faces turned on the stage, 
and there were hundreds of their zenanas in the 
boxes, who could see us acting, though we could 
not see them. They followed the play with rapt 
attention, and it was evident from the succession 
of pauses, in which one might have heard a pin 
drop, and outbursts of applause which Avould have 
drowned a thunder-clap, that they not simply 
watched the movement of events and the changed 
relations of the personages of the play, but, in a 
most philosophical way, entered into the secret, 
inner life of each of them, and comprehended 
the entire development of the plot ; that, in a 
word, the subjectivity of the drama was as real 
to them, yea, more real, than the mere external 
spectacular display. I have never been so well 
understood as Shylock as I was that evening 
by those three thousand Hindus and Moslems. 
They comprehended the most delicate shadings 
of character and the finest points in the dialogue. 
The success that followed these plays was so 
great that I had to consent to repeat them, and 
to extend the programme. 



CALCUTTA. —JL 143 



Besides Shakespearean plays some of the 
Hindus exceedingly liked East Lynne. That 
novel has been translated lately into the Hindus- 
tani and Parsee languages, and tlie success of it 
has been very great. Miss Beaudet played the 
principal character a dozen times, and on one 
occasion a young European gentleman was so 
overcome by her emotional acting that he fainted 
in the fourth act, and had to be carried to his 
home. When he revived he rushed to his 
mother's room and threw himself into her arms 
and exclaimed: — 

" Oh, mother ! what is a home without a 
mother ? " 

I know this to have been a fact, for, by a 
strange coincidence, I was invited to dinner at 
the very house shortly after, and the mother of 
the lad told me the story. 

The play of Leah, the Forsaken, was next 
produced, and was wellnigh as popular as East 
Lynne. 

Before leaving for Simla, the Marchioness of 
Ripon expressed a second wish : this time it was 
to see Romeo and Juliet : in a letter from Lord 
William Beresford, dated Monday, Feburary 20 : 

" Her excellency desires to see Romeo and 
Juliet ; if yuu will kindly write and let me know 
what date you would propose, I will submit your 
letter to her excellency on her return from 
Darjeeling this week, and will inform you as to 
the result." 



144 AN ACTOE'S TOUB. 

The date I proposed was accepted by her 
excellency, and she was highly pleased with the 
performance, and sent Miss Beaudet a beautiful 
bouquet for her impersonation of Juliet. 

My entire season was a marvelous success, my 
clear profit in Calcutta alone amounting to four 
thousand pounds (twenty thousand dollars) ; 
but it is impossible to tell the amount of 
labor, worry, and hardship one had to undergo, 
in teaching the company so as to bring every 
point connected with each play effectively out, 
and to give to each of the parts of the respective 
performances its relative importance, while blend- 
ing them all into a perfect, symmetrical unity 
so as to reach a high standard of acting and of 
art. In thinking even of the golden harvest 
I reaped, I cannot forget the manifold toils by 
which it was reached. Although in Calcutta 
I made-jfurther accessions to my company (which 
at the time I hoped would considerably lighten 
the work for some members of the group), in a 
Mr. Dorcy Ogden and a Mr. Denbigh Newton, 
the first turned out unreliable, and the second 
was of little use. The company was sometimes 
in an unwilling and dogged state, perhaps from 
sheer overwork ; but my own indomitable spirit 
and the constant, joyful co-operation of Miss 
Beaudet, by sheer contagion, pushed them on, 
and made it possible for us to perform within 
three months the following plays: Hamlet, ten 
times; Othello and The Merchant of Venice, 



CALCUTTA. — II. 145 



fourteen times; Romeo and Juliet, Dead or Alive, 
six times; Macbeth, As You Like It, Much Ado 
About Nothing, Narcisse, East Lynne, eight times ; 
Leah, the Forsaken, The Duke's Motto, and The 
Corsican Brothers, — not to mention others. 

After all, it is astonishing what an amount 
of work a European constitution can stand, and 
my own continued good health, through it all, 
has surprised none more than myself. Besides 
teaching what were quite new plays to many 
of the company, there \vas constant rehearsing 
and aiding all the leading parts, superintending 
the outside business management, and looking 
after banking account ; yet, notwithstanding it 
all, I felt quite free of all sense of weariness and 
in the best of spirits, on coming out of the theatre 
in the evening. On one occasion an Eurasian, 
who was as white as a European, and who was 
very fond of acting, teased me until I consented 
to allow him to play Dogberry, one night, as he 
was so very fat and funny. He was delighted 
at the concession, but when he. came into the 
wardrobe he nearly swooned, and complained of 
the heat to such an extent that I had to send 
a servant to get him a pankha boy. Nov/, this man 
was born in India, and had lived all his life 
beneath its skies, and yet he was not able to stand 
as much as we were, although he liad only to 
wear a light domino, while we were dressed in 
silks, velvets, and furs. 



14G AX AGTOB'S TOUB. 

One niglit about eleven o'clock I said to Mr. 
Kellar, the well-known magician : " I am ready 
to go." 

" Well, then, let us b-e off," said he. 

I called to my boy, and in five minutes a two- 
horse gharry (cab) stood in front of my door. 

"Jeety !" (quick) I shouted to the driver, and 
off he drove at a rapid pace over the excellent, 
well-paved, and, on account of the lateness of the 
hour, already deserted streets of Calcutta. It 
took us somewhat forty-five minutes before we 
reached our destination. When the cab halted, 
the boy opened the door, and we stood before a 
high wall at the foot of the river Ganges, whence 
we could see that smoke was ascending from some 
place beyond to the sombre skies. We followed 
the boy through several fields, each surrounded 
by enormously high walls, till at last we reached 
a long field walled around on three sides, while on 
the other we could see the noiseless, dark waters 
of the Ganges. It was a desolate, most dreary 
spot, but in the distance we could see some half- 
dozen shadowy forms moving around what was 
evidently an object of interest, and watched by 
them with great care ; and here and there, as we 
drew nearer to the banks of the Ganges, we saw 
that there were several other similar groups, and 
could clearly see men heaping up piles of wood 
and heaps of smoldering ashes : then suddenly 
quite near to us a pile of wood burst into flame 
and a dreadful smell filled the night-air, and we 



CALCUTTA. — II. 147 



knew that we were within the Burning Ghaut of 
the Hindus. 

"But where are the bodies?" I asked, and 
before the boy could answer, I heard a sound as 
if a too heavily charged carbolic soda-water bottle 
had burst. 

"Dats de squll, sab, just bu'st, vat you hear 
making dat noise," and my attention being called 
to the spot, I saw that the bones of a skull had 
fallen to the ground and that a body was lying 
on the top of a pile of wood wellnigh covered 
by the flames and . fast burning to ashes. 
Soon after we had an opportunity of seeing the 
entire method of cremation as practised amongst 
the Hindus. 

The simplicity of the proceeding surprised me. 
A couple of logs of wood are laid on the ground 
parallel to each other, and then two more are laid 
across them parallelly, and this process is con- 
tinued till a pile of a considerable height is built : 
then the body to be cremated is taken and, so far 
as can be, doubled up, and placed on the top ; 
more logs are placed two and two, parallel to each 
other, each successive layer being crossway to the 
one beneath ; then, abundance of brushwood 
having been placed at the bottom of the pile, the 
nearest relative of the deceased walks around 
it two or three times and says a prayer, after 
which he fires the brushwood with a torch, and 
almost instantly the entire pile is one volume 
of flame. It takes usually from three to four 



148 . 1 .V A CrOE'S TO uit. 

hours to burn a body, aud tlie ashes that remain 
of it are gathered and thrown into the sacred 
river that flows hard by. The dreadful silence 
of the i^lace, and the mistiness of the night on 
which I was at the Burning Ghaut, the towering 
walls on three sides of it, and the awful and 
mysterious waters of the Ganges on the other, 
together with the noisomeness of the dense, 
surcharged atmosphere, — all combined to pro- 
duce a scene most weird and appalling. I asked 
one of the cremators whether the bodies of all 
persons, rich and poor, were burnt alike. 

" Oh, no, sab," he replied ; " rich man burn 
himself wid nice sandal-wood — good smell ; poor 
man, no pies (pennies), sab ; " and at this moment 
he made a very energetic forward movement for 
backsheesh. 

When in Bombay subsequently, I saw a similar 
scene on the ground there devoted to these last, 
sad offices of the Hindus, but it produced nothing 
like the same effect upon me. I have often 
wondered since whether Schiller could have 
known anything of cremation, for, if so, how 
could he have written in his famous " Lay of 
the Bell" — 

" Whate'er the fierce flanaes may destroy, 
One consolation sweet is kft; 
His lov'd ones' heads he counts, — and, Joy ! 
He is not e'en of one bereft ! " ? 

After leaving the Burning Ghaut, Mr. Kellar 
proposed that we. should visit, on our way 



CAL CUTTA.— II. 1 40 



home, another night-scene of Calcutta, and drive 
through the so-called (but surely miscalled) 
"quarter of pleasure." We did so, and to my 
disgust I saw streets full of the most horrible 
spectacles and orgies of vice I have ever beheld. 
We passed houses upon houses crowded with 
beautiful, well-shaped Jewish women, all from 
the Roumanian districts, principally Banat, Croa- 
tian, and Servian, following a trade of infamy and 
lust. They are brought over by their masters, 
chiefly Jews also, like slaves, for whom they live 
a life of degradation, and after they have made 
money enough to satisfy their greed are often 
married to them. These men are of the lowest 
type in the world : innocence and youth and help- 
lessness are no deterrents to their villainy : they 
have lost all sense of purity, chastity, and honor. 
Yet they have tlieir clubhouse, and carry on their 
vile trade in the broad daylight ; the only restric- 
tion being that they are not allowed outside this 
quarter of the city, and are under constant police 
supervision. I would not have believed it pos- 
sible, had I not seen it with my own eyes, that 
Jewish men and women could so far have fallen. 

" One sin, I know, another doth provoke; 
Murder 's as near to lust, as flame to smoke." 

The Jews, as a rule, are very sensitive as to 
their chastity, but it is one of the saddest facts 
confronted in Eastern travel that the prostitution 
that prevails throughout the Orient is principally 



150 x\A^ ACTOR'S TOCH. 

carried on by Jews and Jewesses. With disgust 
I called to the cabman to turn back and drive 
home as quickly as possible, for I felt that here, 
even more than at the Burning Ghaut, 1 had 
looked on the horrors and terrors of death. 

" But when Ave in our vieiousness grow hard 
(O misery on't!), the wise gods seal our eyes: 
In our own flltli drop our clear judgments ; make us 
Adore our errors ; laugh at us, while we strut 
To our confusion." 

The Botanical and Zoological Gardens are very 
large and fine, and one of the most lovely drives 
of the city lies through them. These gardens 
were established as early as 1786, and in the long 
succession of years each has added something to 
them by way of charm or beauty. There is no 
better way of spending a Sunday afternoon in 
Calcutta than by paying a visit to them. Every- 
body drives to the Zoo, to see the animals fed, 
at five o'clock in the afternoon. They contain 
a magnificent collection of reptiles, tigers, and 
monkeys. There is a most venerable bear there, 
that has been in the gardens for many years, and 
to which special honor is paid ; for he is provided 
with a cage of great size all to liimself. The cage 
stands on a mound, and everybody is allowed 
to go near him, he is so inoffensive, and there is 
not the slightest danger; at least such is the 
general supposition both amongst the Europeans 
and the natives. 



CALCUTTA. — 11. 151 



" I would not trust myself too near him," I said 
to a rather too-confiding gentleman. 

" Bless you ! " said he. "• I have seen the beast 
the last twenty years and had lots of fun with 
him. I '11 show you ; " and he took an empty 
paper bag, in which he had carried cakes for the 
animals, and shut it up to fool " Old Grizzly," 
who took it and carefully opened it ; and while 
he was doing so the man played with the woolly 
top of his head. "Old Grizzly," perhaps annoyed 
over the cheat, or having grown angry at the 
succession of indignities to which he had been 
subjected by the same visitor, — for I suppose 
even a bear loses his patience under such provo- 
cations, as the rest of us mortals do, — seized 
hold of the man's arm with his two large paws, 
through the bars, and was just about setting 
his teeth to it, when I gave him a blow with my 
walking-stick, which I fortunately had with me, 
on his mouth, which somewhat puzzled him, 
while I pulled the man simultaneously with all 
might out of his clutches ; and he escaped the 
loss of an arm, leaving only a complete sleeve of 
his coat together with that of his shirt and a 
part of the skin of his arm in " Old Grizzly's " 
possession. The poor man could only say: 
" Thank you, sir ; if it had n't been for you I 
should very likely have been an arm the poorer, 
and perhaps a life." He was as pale as a sheet, 
and, desirous of avoiding a scene, for I saw 
already a lot of persons coming toward the spot. 



152 AN ACTOB'S TOUB. 

and not ambitious to be made a hero, I walked 
toward my carriage with the ladies I had accom- 
panied, and disappeared. 

The word " cobra " is a terror to the Hindus. 
The statistics of India say that upward of ten 
thousand human beings die yearly from the bite 
of the cobra. The deaths principally occur in 
the rural districts, where the Hindus are accus- 
tomed to walk barefooted over the fields and 
roads, and step unknowingly on the reptile ; for 
it is a well-known fact that the cobra does not 
attack unless he is attacked, or when any one 
happens to come between him and his hiding- 
place. It is a dreadful creature, and its bite is 
incurable. As the full Portuguese name, cobra 
de capello, signifies, it is the "snake of the hood"; 
that is, when about to attack it dilates the back 
and sides of the neck so as to resemble a hood, 
or, one may say, wings ; then it bends itself up, 
and often jumps several feet forward at its prey. 
The only animal which will fight this horrible 
reptile is the small mongoose, about twice the 
size of a ferret, with a long bushy tail and a 
sharp nose and mouth. It catches its mighty 
victim by the back of the neck and literally 
bites its head off. When bitten itself by the 
cobra, it is commonly believed that it runs into 
the jungle and eats of a certain plant which is 
an antidote, though no one, so far as I could 
learn, has any definite knowledge of its nature 
and properties. 



CAL C UTTA . — //. 1 53 



The best way of destroying the cobra, up till 
now discovered by the Hindus, seems to be by 
means of poisoned milk. The reptile is very fond 
of milk, and, without for a moment suspecting 
that his favorite beverage may contain poison, 
drinks heartily of it, and dies, or becomes so 
impotent that a man may easily make an end 
of him. 

In the city of Calcutta there are no cobras, 
although the cellar of the Theatre Royal, where 
T played part of the season, is said to be infested 
with them. During the engagement of Mr. 
Kellar, two of his assistants had to go nightly 
below to work the automata, and every night when 
the time approached for them to descend, they 
grew as pale as ghosts. One of these men assured 
me that he had seen on one occasion as many 
as half a dozen cobras jumping about. It is 
certainly a fact that, when I took ove'r the 
theatre on my lease, I could not get the coolies 
to go below to clear the cellar of the old rubbish 
that had accumulated. I had several batches of 
coolies, but each ran off every time as soon as 
they heard what I wanted done, and I was obliged 
to abandon the job. It was quite amusing : save 
for the serious thought that would come to one 
sometimes that possibly a cobra might be hidden 
in one's own wardrobe : to see my people cautiously 
handling their dresses and shaking them nightly 
before putting them on, in the utmost fear that 
the deadly reptile was lurking in some jacket. 



164 AN ACTOR'S TOUIi. 

cloak, or petticoat. On one occasion, at the 
morning rehearsal, one of the actors made a bad 
joke, and frightened the ladies wellnigh to death, 
by the cry : " A cobra ! a cobra ! " They never 
forgave him, and it was a very foolish and a 
wrong thing on his part. The government pays 
a premium of eight annas (twenty-five cents) 
for every dead cobra. 

A certain manager of a theatre in Calcutta, 
who lives half of his life in a state of dazed con- 
sciousness, fancied one day there was a cobra in 
his room, and sent for a snake-charmer, who on 
coming seemed actually to catch it and demanded 
payment. 

" We will kill it," said the dazed manager, and 
he was about to knock it on the head, when the 
charmer screamed, and protecting his " tamed " 
snake ran out of the room with it as quickly as 
possible. 

The Hindus are, as a rule, kind-hearted, quick 
in perception, and hospitable. Every New Year's 
day they send a vast quantity of backsheesh in 
the shape of cakes and baskets of nuts and fruit 
to their friends. So that the words seem as true 
to-day as they were in the time of Aristophanes, 
who, in " The Acharnians," makes the commis- 
sioner just returned from Persia say : — 

"Yes, Orientals estimate their heroes 
By their capacitj^ for food and drink." 

I myself, on the New Year's day I passed at 



CALCUTTA. — 11. 155 



Calcutta, received as many as a dozen large cakes 
and twenty baskets of nuts and fruits from Hindu 
friends. The company lived wellnigh exclusively 
on these for over a month, the supply Avas so 
great. The Hindus are especially fond of betel- 
nut and of lime leaves : one or the other of these 
they are constantly chewing. They are good for 
digestion ; but they leave a most objectionable, 
nasty red saliva on their teeth and lips, which 
makes them look savage. There are other well- 
flavored and scented nuts which they like, and 
if you call upon a rich Hindu he offers you a seat 
on a grand carpet or rug, with a high pillow for 
you to lean upon, and then you are served with 
nuts, spices, and delicious sherbets. In the houses 
of the more modernized Hindus these luxuries 
will be supplemented by cigarettes, and perhaps 
some of the party will regale you with a song, 
which, of course, 3'ou are. supposed to be pleased 
with, though too often it is a most unmusical and 
inartistic performance, being simply a di'one and 
principally coming from the head and throat. At 
one of the babus at whose mansion I was a 
frequent visitor, I was surprised, on being shown 
over the house, to find a bed, in one of his apart- 
ments, almost eighteen feet wide, and twenty 
feet long, completely hemmed in with curtains 
and glass windows, and over which was a large 
pankhS,. 

" That 's my family bed, where I sleep with 
my wives," said mine host. 



156 AN ACTOB'S TOUB. 

I was just about to ask him how many, but 
I stopped, thmking the question might seem 
offensive, or at least indicate an impolite inquisi- 
tiveness on my part; but from general appear- 
ances, and the considerable number of pillows, I 
judged that his wives were, if not as numerous 
as Solomon's, quite sufficient for the most am- 
bitious man in that direction. 

The wives of the Hindus have not the pleasant- 
est lives. Hiudu girls are bestowed in marriage 
very young, sometimes before they are even born, 
to such and such a son, of such and such a family. 
They don't see each other till they are fit to live 
together, which is when the boy is about fifteen 
or sixteen years of age, and the girl eleven or 
twelve. From the time they begin to live with 
their husbands they are locked up, and afterward 
never allowed to be seen outside their own home- 
steads. If they are sick, a female physician is 
sent for ; they are not even permitted to eat with 
their husbands, and dare not sit at the same 
table with them. 

The Hindu conception of woman is that of an 
unclean thing, and up to a quarter of a century 
ago the wife was of no account alone whatso- 
ever; and she was taken and burnt alive with 
the corpse of her husband. It was reported that 
such a ceremony had taken place somewhere in 
the interior while I was in Calcutta, and it was 
openly affirmed that the government has not 
been able to crush completely and effectively 



CALCUTTA. — //. 157 

this dreadful, savage custom, but that the priests 
ill the interior have still an occasional wife burn- 
ing or empaling. This immolation or burning 
of widows alive at the funeral-pyre of their hus- 
bands has never been voluntary, or, if so, in only 
the merest few instances ; and though some 
fanatics maintain it has been the case, and that 
the widows follow their deceased lords with 
meekness and obedience to the burning-stake, 
they are nearly always intoxicated by powerful 
drugs and carried away by the fanatical excite- 
ment of others, and often actually shoved on to 
the pyre, while their screams are drowned by the 
loud and terrible noise of the tom-tom and the 
shouts and yells of the infuriated crowd. 

The Hindus have a great sense of humor and 
are always ready to enjoy a good joke. In this 
respect they resemble the Chinese ; but in this 
only. They are. not half as clever, but far better- 
hearted. If the Hindus possessed the brain of 
the Chinese, and the Chinese the conscience of 
the Hindus, Europe would have to fear these 
great nations : but, as it is, the balance of the 
world's peace is kept steady. 

The Hindu women are short, thin, tyid ugly; 
but the men are of fine stature and splendid 
proj)ortions. I have seen many nobly built figures 
amongst the men, but I have never seen a hand- 
some woman except amongst the Eurasians, who 
are the offspring of intermarriages ; or amongst ■ 
the Parsees, who are nut natives. 



158 AN ACTOB'S TOUB. 

The great ambition of a Hindu is to become 
a lawyer, or, as he is termed in India, a pleader. 
There, as in America, the lawyer is allowed to 
practise both at the bar and as an attorney ; but 
there he is principally occupied in the lower 
courts, which they call the " small-cause " court, 
where you can only sue up to a thousand rupees 
(five hundred dollars). There are four judges 
in this court, and it is open all the year round; 
it is on the same basis as the county court in 
England and the municipal court in America, only 
that it is always active. The amount of work 
transacted in this court is tremendous. The 
Hindu likes to go to law, whether he wins or 
loses ; he seems to derive intense pleasure from 
merely seeing his name in the law cases as plain- 
tiff or defendant ; even from standing up in the 
court as a witness, and it seems of no conse- 
quence to him which side he takes. And since 
there are so many different castes who hate each 
other, the quarreling is constant, and the courts 
are crowded from the beginning to the end of 
the year. 

It is amazing to see the readiness with which 
they get their witnesses, and the excessive diffi- 
culty there is to get at the truth. Perjury is 
the commonest crime in India, and if the laws 
relating to this particular offence were to be 
carried out, at least half the natives would be 
quartered in the prisons of the country. No 
caste recognizes the rights of any other caste, 



CALCUTTA.— II. 159 



and least of all that the Christian dog can 
have any. 

Sir Henry De Witt, the chief justice of Ceylon, 
told me one day he liked the island very well 
(he had lately been appointed to his present posi- 
tion from the Cape), but that the lying that was 
carried on in the courts of Ceylon was beyond 
description. He said that he could not believe 
one out of every ten witnesses who were sum- 
moned before him, and had to rely entirely upon 
his own judgment. He often thought of fol- 
lowing the example of an old judge of the central 
criminal court in Copenhagen, who, knowing the 
difficulty of convicting a witness for perjury, 
placed a constable behind the witnesses with a 
sharp, thin instrument like a needle, and every 
time he had reason to think a witness was telling 
a lie, lifted his hand to his beard, which was a 
sign for the constable to stick the point of the 
instrument into the back or leg of the witness ; 
whereupon there was usually a howling on his 
part, and under a sense of pain, which not infre- 
quently leads to something resembling transient 
feelings of repentance and pious emotions, even 
in the worst wretches, the truth was immediately 
forthcoming. 

There is a good story told of one of the clever 
little Hindu pleaders, who represented the plaintiff 
in a case in which the pleader for the defendant 
was not quite ready to proceed, and so desired 
the consent of the court for the case to stand 



1(10 AN ACTOR'S TOUR. 

over a few days. The judge replied that they 
had better arrange that amongst themselves. 

"I am ready, your honor," said the plaintiff's 
pleader, "and desire to go on." 

" I '11 beg of you to let the case stand over. 
I am really not prepared," said the pleader for 
the defendant. 

" I cannot, for I have all my witnesses here." 

"How many?" 

" Twenty-five." 

"I '11 pay their fees." (The witness fee is eight 
annas, that is, twenty-five cents.) 

" Cannot! I pay double ; impossible ! " 

" Well, we '11 put it to his honor again." 

His honor decided in favor of the defendant's 
pleader that the case was to stand over ; and the 
pleader for the plaintiff rushed out of the court 
wild with rage ; but no sooner was he outside 
than he met a brother pleader, a great friend 
of his, and disburdened his soul thus : — 

" Just think, Mullick, had my case ready 
against. Moocherjee, and his honor ruled it to 
stand over ; have all my witnesses here, and 
everything ready. How damnably provoking, is 
n't it?" 

" How many witnesses ? " 

"Twenty-five." 

"Well, leave them here for my case; it's about 
to come on, and I have n't quite enough witnesses 
to satisfy me. Of course I '11 pay them the 
usual fee." 



CALCUTTA. —If. Ifil 



" Accepted." 

" There are liars and swearers enough to beat the honest 
man." 

I myself had a case in a certain town in India, 
where a dishonest babu tried to impose upon me, 
and dragged me into the small-cause court. 

The judge, a most remarkably genial old gentle- 
man, saw through the case at once, and it was 
decided against the babu. At the close, his honor 
asked me to step into his private office, and we 
had a most delightful hour's talk upon art and 
the drama. This was a most effectual way of 
settling the other cases that were to come up 
before him that day, for the various plaintiffs 
and defendants grew tired of waiting, and settled 
their difficulties among themselves ; 

"And did as adversaries do in law, 
Strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends." 

Shortly before we left Calcutta, Miss Beaudet 
was robbed of several hundred dollars' worth of 
jewelry by a servant. The case was immediately 
given into the hands of the police, who did their 
utmost to discover the culprit. My suspicion 
fell upon one of the boys, and I took him aside 
into a private room, and spoke gently to him. I 
begged and implored him to give up the stolen 
property. I even promised to give him twice as 
much as the smelter or the precious-stone buyer 



162 AN ACTOR'S TOUB. 

would give him for it. Just then the chief con- 
stable, who had seen me take the man into the 
anteroom, came in, and asked me what I had 
done. I told him, and he set up a laugh that 
shook the house, saying, " That 's not the way to 
deal with these fellows; you must give them a 
good beating ; " and turning to the fellow he took 
him by the beard and jerked his head forward 
and backward. 

" Pig " (the greatest insult to a Moslem), 
" where is the property ? Tell it, or I '11 kill 
you." 

The boy never winced, and all he said was : 
"Nay-, sab, nay." 

Well, two of the servants were locked up as 
suspects, and I may say that the way the police 
try to get at the truth is by a gentle torture. They 
send a tremendously large-built Hindu policeman 
to a suspected person at night, who presses his 
ear, twists his hand or arm, pulls out his thumb, 
sticks his fist into his sides, sits upon him and 
squeezes him wellnigh to pulp, till at last he is 
willing to confess. The law forbids him to use 
force, and, as long as the culprit cannot show 
serious bruises, the law is quite content. 

The Hindu servants are terrible thieves, and 
have no sense of gratitude. 

One of the late chief justices of Bengal, on 
retiring and going home to England after twenty 
years of Indian service, provided a rich collection 
of precious stones, which he intended to distribute 



CALCUTTA. — 11. 163 



among his friends on board the vessel before it 
left the pier. He put them carefully into a small 
casket and placed it in a satchel, which he handed 
to a trusted servant to be carried on board. 
But when the time to distribute them arrived, 
and he opened the satchel, they were gone. The 
chief detective was sent for. 

" Who carried the satchel ? " he asked. 

" My boy," said the judge. 

" Then he 's got them, your honor," the detec- 
tive responded. 

" Nonsense ! man," said the judge : " he 's been 
in my service for twenty years as faithful as the 
day. I gave him an annuity and a bungalow for 
his fidelity. I '11 stake my existence upon his 
honesty." 

" Then your honor must allow me to retire," 
said the detective, "as I am sure of my sus- 
picions." 

" Well, I will not stand in the way of justice 
being executed," said the surprised judge, "and 
I will give you permission to do as you like, but 
you will see how greatly you wrong my poor old 
Nauth." 

The police went at once to the servant's bunga- 
low, quite fresh and new, just given to him by 
his grateful master, where they found a handsome 
trunk in the corner of the principal room : also, 
as it afterward turned out, a present from him: 
and opened it, and at the top was the little 
casket containing the judge's jewels, and several 



164 AX AGTOB'S TOUB. 

yards of gold trimming of a court suit Avhicli the 
judge had missed some time back. So much for 
a Hindu servant's fidelity. 

" When a man's servant shall play the cur with him, look 
you, it goes hard.'' 

The craftiness of these servants in carrying 
on their knavish tricks surprises one, even more 
than the dishonesty itself. Their general de- 
meanor reminds one of lago's words : — 

" You shall mark 
Many a duteous and knee-crooking knave, 
That, doting on his own obsequious bondage, 
"Wears out his time, nmch like his master's ass, 
For naught but provender; and, Avhen he's old, cashier'd; 
Whip me such honest knaves. Others there are. 
Who, trimm'd in forms and visages of duty. 
Keep yet their hearts attending on themselves, 
And, throwing but shows of service on their loi-ds. 
Do well thrive by them ; and when they have lin'd their 

coats. 
Do themselves homage: these fellows have some soul/' 

I had one who practised himself so thoroughly 
that he could imitate my handwriting most 
admirably, and I think there are few persons 
who write a hand harder to copy in its various 
details than mine, but I must admit that he 
succeeded so well that his writing was just like 
my own, only somewhat a trifle better, and, 
heaven knows ! there was need of its being so. 
Well, he utilized the art he had attained, in 
writing letters of recommendation respecting 



CALCUTTA. — IL 165 



himself in my name. Here is a copy of one of 
these : — 

" Hassen Al Bey is an excellent servant, honest, 
clever, and industrious; and was never known 
in any single thing to prove unwortliy. I can 
recommend him to everybody." 

To this precious document my full name was 
subscribed, and never did signature seem so much 
like my own. I found several of such letters on 
my writing-table one day, and on searching the 
boy a dozen more were found, together with 
numerous articles that he had stolen from me. 
I asked the constable what the boy wanted with 
all these letters (they were on my stamped 
paper). 

"Oh, he sells them to thieves and burglars, 
who present themselves to strangers as they come 
into the city and are engaged for honest servants, 
but afterward rob them." 

I half wondered that he did n't borrow the Earl 
of Kent's words, from King Lear, to point the 
moral of his own great worth : " I can keep hon- 
est counsel, ride, run, mar a curious tale in telling 
it, and deliver a plain message bluntly ; that which 
ordinary men are fit for I am qualify'd in: and the 
best of me is diligence." 

I had to charge the man, and he got three 
months' imprisonment. The disposition to dis- 
honesty is very strong in many of them. One of 



166 AN ACTOR'S TOUB. 

the writers (same position as bookkeeper here), a 
babu, who was engaged in a large banking-house 
in Calcutta, and who had to give as much as 
twenty thousand rupees (ten thousand dollars) 
as guaranty for honest behavior, actually ran off 
with ten thousand rupees, and this after ten years 
of faithful service. But to speak of a happier 
subject. 

The viceregal court comes to Calcutta, as I 
have already said, about the middle of December, 
and remains till the middle of March. This is the 
gayest, brightest season in the life of that "city 
of palaces." R.ecej)tions are held twice a week, 
and the court gives parties and balls according 
to circumstances. One of the greatest festivals 
of the season is the children's garden-party, given 
annually by their excellencies, and very largely 
attended, in the beautiful grounds that surround 
the Government House. The Marchioness of 
Ripon is the life and soul of all the court festivi- 
ties, and is highly popular both with the Europe- 
ans and the Hindus. The viceroy is not popular. 
He is admitted by everybody to be a very religious 
man; kind, but overzealous, and too self-centred 
and retiring, rarely showing himself amongst the 
people, and hardly ever appearing at any of the 
rendezvous du monde. He has become very unpop- 
ular with the European portion of Calcutta society, 
on account of his too strong leaning toward the 
natives. The most popular men there, at the time 
of my visit, were the lieutenant-governor. Sir 
Ashley Eden, and Lord William Beresford. 



CAL C UTTA . — IT. 167 



One thing astonishes me greatly, namely, that 
in so large and beautiful a city as the metropolis 
of Bengal, that stands for the whole of India, one 
cannot get a decent meal, except one dines at a 
private house. The hotels and so-called boarding- 
house establishments are beneath contempt — with 
their tough meats, boiled-out stews, nasty, thick 
soups, strong curries, flabby bread, starchy pud- 
dings, and worse pies. Prepare yourself to starve 
as soon as you reach India, except in Colombo, 
where you can get good, wholesome living at the 
Oriental, or the Mount Lavinia Hotel. Now, 
farewell, dear, generous Calcutta. In everything, 
save in thy cuisine, thou hast been so to me, and 
in that little particular perhaps I ought to forgive 
thee; at least, I shall suffer no more from it, 
while memories of a thousand sweet pleasures 
will remain. 



CHAPTER XL— India. 

BOMBAY. 

" Hath Britain all the sun that shines ? Day, night, 
Are they not but in Britain ? I' the world's volume 
Our Britain seems as of it, but not in it; 
lu a great pool a sM'an's nest : pr'ythee, think 
There's livers out of Britain." 

— CymheUne, Act in, sc. 4= 

Malibar Hill — Apollo Bunda — The Gaiety, the finest theatre in India — 
Sir James Fergusson, the governor — The i'arsees — The Mazdean 
religion — The morning offerings at the temples — The Silent Towers 
— The Parsee conception of nature and life — The Parsees speak 
English and are great admii-ers of Shakespeare — Four young Par- 
see medical students play parts in Hamlet — A Hindu marriage — 
Hindu theosophy — Juggernaut, the "Lord of the World " — Symbol- 
ism in religion. 

FnOM Calcutta, I conducted my company to 
Bombay, a journey of about two thousand miles 
across the continent of India, and now easily made 
by means of the excellent railroad that connects 
those far-separated cities. 

Of all the large cities in India, Bombay is the 
most picturesque and in many respects the pleas- 
antest to live in. The city lies close to the sea, 
and there is always a refreshing breeze for eight 
hours in the day ; then it has a great variety of 
picturesque houses and antiquities. In the city, 
or what is called the "Fort," very few people 
live ; most of the better class have their splendid 
villas on Malibar Hill about four miles from the 
heart of Bombay, and reached by a steady ascent ; 



BOMBAY. 169 

the drive being very delightful, through beautiful, 
undulating scenery, and commanding fine views 
of the entire harbor, and if there is a breeze at 
any season of the year the Malibar Hill is sure to 
come in for a share of it. 

The ladies drive into town in the afternoon to 
call for their husbands at their banks, offices, or 
stores, and before they return home all the princi- 
pal people assemble in their carriages at the Apollo 
Bunda, a pier close to the harbor, where a band of 
music plays every evening from five o'clock till 
half-past six. 

There is a fine theatre in Bombay, the finest 
in all India, called the Gaiety. My reception 
there was very hearty, especially from the Par- 
sees, who came in great crowds to support me. 

I found my old friend, Sir James Fergusson, 
the governor of Bombay, as cordial as ever; he 
placed my entire engagement under his special 
patronage, and came nearly every evening to the 
theatre. Sir James is a man of true, generous 
soul and of great simplicity of character, and 
withal possessing a strong individuality, which 
remains v/ith liim through all the changes of 
years and circumstances. I met him for the first 
time on my earlier visit to Adelaide, as I have 
already mentioned. Lady Edith, eldest daughter 
of the late Earl of Dalhousie, formerly viceroy 
of India, was then living, and Sir James and his 
wife gave me a warm welcome there, both on the 
stage and in society. Several years afterward a 



170 AN ACTOR'S TOUB. 

gentleman accosted me one day in the streets of 
Dundee : — 

"How are you, Bandmann? How do you do, 
sir ? Don't you know me ? " 

" Ileally, sir, your face is familiar, but I don't 
know where to place you at this moment," 
said I. 

" Well, I met you in Adelaide : my name is 
Fergusson." 

"Sir James," said I, as he grasped my hand, 
" how stupid of me not to recognize you." 

That was the simple way in which he recalled 
himself to my memory, and the same fine spirit 
characterizes him in all the relations of his high 
office and station. 

The Parsees are the cleverest people in India. 
I may almost say as clever, if not cleverer, 
than the Europeans. They dress themselves the 
nearest of all the Orientals after the European 
fashion, and most of them have discarded even 
the inartistic helmet which for ages has been 
worn among them as a distinction. 

The Parsee women are very beautiful, and 
allowed to go at perfect liberty, wherever their 
own sweet will takes them, without let or hin- 
drance from their noble lords, and to act as they 
like, just as European ladies. It is a charming 
sight to see a handsome Parsee lady dressed in 
her picturesque costume of embroidered silk, and 
coiled hairdress, walking along the promenades, or 
driving in her carriage : one is carried away by 



BOMBA Y. 171 



her lovely, perfect shape, rounded form, black, 
sparkling eyes, and pure, pale skin. 

" Whom everj'thing becomes, to chide, to laugh, 
To weep; whose every passion fully strives 
To make itself, in thee, fair and admired ! " 

The children of the Parsees are beautiful like 
their mothers. 

The Parsees are lire-worshipers. Not, as it is 
said vulgarly, that their God (Ormuzd, earlier 
worshiped as Ahura Mazda) is fire ; they rather 
worship the divine through the symbol of fire, 
or, in other words, they recognize in fire, in all its 
forms, a divine energy and fruitful force, and bow 
themselves in reverence before this awful mystery 
and potency of life. They worship the fire in 
the sense of warmth, light, electricity, and life. 
They worship the sun as the sovereign power of 
nature, that gives fruitfulness to the earth, and 
vitality and health to all beings, and pray to it 
every morning as the representative to them of 
the highest and most potent energy of the 
universe. Every true Parsee salams the light 
wherever he sees it, — in the rising or setting sun, 
or the noon's glory and splendor, — 

" Even from Hyperion's rising in the East, 
Until his very downfall in the sea," 

and brings his offering: if poor, a portion of 
cinnamon-wood, which costs a few pies (pence), 
or, if rich, sandal-wood, that costs from eiglit 



172 AN AOTOB\S TOUB. 



annas to several rupees : to the sacred fire kept 
perpetually burning in the temple, — the symbol 
of the divine, — every morning, 

" So soon as the all-cheering sun 
Should in the farthest East begin to draw 
The shady curtains from Aurora's bed," 

as the expression of his devotion. And hundreds, 
often thousands, of Parsees are to be seen in the 
roads and parks of Bombay, with their faces 
toward the sun setting in evening glory, saying 
their prayers and salaming this image of the 
light and life of God. 

There are three closed-in towers, situated .in 
the most lovely neighborhood of the city, right 
at the top of Malibar Hill, and surrounded by 
hundreds of acres of valuable land, all beau- 
tifully laid out. These are called the Silent 
Towers, because they are the place of the last 
offices and funeral rites of the Parsees, who have 
their bodies eaten up by vultures, instead of 
buried or cremated. I think, in some parts of 
Siam, " holy " dogs (not vultures) are kept for 
this purpose, but for my part I would prefer the 
latter. No visitor is allowed to approach the 
Silent Towers within a couple of hundred yards, 
but a model is to be seen inside the keeper's 
lodge, who, of course, for backsheesh (a magician 
everywhere in the East) shows it and explains all. 
The priest receives the corpse, which is carried to 
the place of the Silent Towers, followed by 



BOMBAY. 173 

hundreds of mourners, ranged two by two, dressed 
in pure white robes, and places it on an iron 
grating. He then makes an incision on the left 
side, where the heart lies, and an old, trained 
vulture, which is of huge size and sits on the 
highest pinnacle of the towers, swoops down 
and has the first pick, while hundreds more, 
together with crows and magpies, soon gather 
about the body, and in a short time there is 
nothing left, save the bones. The blood drops 
through the grating into a channel below, whence 
it is conveyed to the sea. The bones are taken 
away every few weeks or months and burned, and 
the ashes of all are preserved together, as those 
of one family, which the Parsees are to one 
another. 

" Death, having prey'd upon the outward jiarts, 
Leaves theiu invisible, and his siege is now 
Against the niind."' 

The metliod of thus disposing of the body, 
which may strike some as peculiarly repulsive, 
is, nevertheless, the expression of a most poetic 
idea. In the Mazdean religion, which is in many 
respects very philosophical and poetic rather than 
a clearly defined set of dogmas, the earth is 
conceived as pure and holy and must not be 
polluted with foulness. As soon as the light (the 
soul) has fled from the body there is nothing but 
foul matter left, and this must not be placed in 
the bosom of the earth, which is the home of life. 



174 AN ACTOB'S TOUB. 



Therefore, in these several ways it is disposed 
of, and carried, so far as can be, once again into 
the spheres of life, unpolluted and without taint. 
Perhaps, however, their great prophet Zoroaster 
(or Zarathustra), who instituted this method of 
getting rid of the corpse was, after all, actuated 
by economic and sanitary reasons, even more 
than by poetic, and in the far-distant age when 
he lived anticipated, to some extent, the great 
lesson of modern times, and surely no small part 
of religion: that the cleanliness and health of a 
people are priceless, beautiful things, and that 
everything ought to be removed as quickly as 
possible that bears upon it the touch of death, 
or that by its presence interferes with that best 
of all sacrifices to the Highest — the devotion of 
a sane mind in a sane hody. 

" As this temple waxes, 
The inward service of the mind and soul 
Grows wide withal." 

Every Parsee that I met could speak English, 
and their likeness to the Jews is striking in 
various respects. They are great lovers of Shake- 
speare, and were very anxious to show their 
ardent admiration for whatever talent I may have 
of impersonating his characters. A number of 
important persons waited on me, and asked, as 
a special favor to their youths, if I would allow 
a few of the students of the Grant Medical 
College, in connection with the University of 



BOMBAY. 175 

Bombay, to play with me. I promised to do so, 
and about a dozen young Parsee gentlemen 
called. I was surprised to find them so familiar 
with the great poet, and was in a predicament 
whom to choose, as they appeared all fairly tal- 
ented. At last I picked out four, to whom I 
allotted the following parts in Hamlet: Laertes., 
Lalkaka ; Polonius, Tata ; King., Setna ; Rosen- 
crantZy Chackin. 

The other characters were, of course, filled 
by my company. Now, considering that they 
were alien to the language, and not even Euro- 
peans, these young gentlemen did wonders, and 
I said as much, to the delight of the overflowing 
audience which came to see them act. 

While at Bombay I saw, one night, a wonderful 
spectacle, namely, a Hindu marriage. The pro- 
cession lasted nearly an hour, and there were all 
sorts of devices and odd and curious Eastern 
fashions. The bride and bridegroom, quite 
children, about four and six years of age, sat 
each on a pony, and the presents were carried 
by coolies on their heads, and to my eyes there 
seemed at least a thousand laden with nuptial 
gifts, or discharging some office connected with 
the elaborate ceremony. There was, of course, 
abundance of Hindu tom-tom music, in which 
there was more noise than harmony, and which 
always reminded me of the fool's lines in Othello : 
" The general so likes your music, that he desires 
you, for love's sake, to make no more noise with 



176 AY ACTOE\S' TOUR. 

it " ; and the golden temples and images of the 
gods on large wagons were innumerable. I saw 
more of the Hindu Pantheon on that occasion 
than on any other during my visit to India; it 
seemed that all the gods were taken out, as it 
were, by their devoted nurses, for an airing. I 
do not think, however, if we could get at the 
bottom of Hindu theosophy, we should find that 
those images are, in any sense, conceived as final, 
or as in themselves worth anything whatsoever. 
Whatever glory they have is on account of their 
typifying some supersensuous idea or attribute 
of the Unseen ; and the reverence and worship 
seemingly offered to them are in reality intended 
for the Highest. I half regret that my travels 
in India did not embrace Juggernaut, the most 
famous place of pilgrimage in the entire country. 
What Mecca is to the Moslems, Jerusalem to all 
Christians, Rome to Catholics, or Canterbury to 
English Churchmen, that Juggernaut is to the 
Hindus. The name of the god enshrined in the 
celebrated temple there. Juggernaut (or, as it 
is sometimes written, Juggernath), means the 
" Lord of the World." The image is said to be 
most gorgeously decorated, and on the occasion 
of a great festival is carried upon a tremendous 
car with wheels, which is drawn by the devotees. 
Formerly it was very generally believed amongst 
Europeans that, as this car of the god passed 
through the crowded streets on festal days, a 
great many enraptured worshipers voluntarily 



BOMBAY. 177 

threw themselves on the ground to be crushed 
by the wheels of the god-chariot, as an act of 
sacrifice and homage to the Deity ; but all this is 
now exploded, for it is known that whatever 
deaths attend the festivals of the " Lord of the 
World" are due rather to accident than any 
intention on the part of those who assemble to 
figure in them. 

Some years ago the Asiatic Society presented 
the French government with a model of the 
temple and processional car of Juggernaut. It is 
a very precious specimen of Hindu art, its date 
being supposed to be 1198 of our era, and is 
now amongst the rich treasures of the Louvre. 
It is difficult to grasp the exact idea which, to 
Hindu thought and piet}^ is represented by the 
God-image, named the " Lord of the World." 
But here, perhaps, one theology may assist 
another, and we may say that, as Christ and 
images of his nativity, passion, and crucifixion 
are symbols, " as is the sepulchre in stubborn 
Jewry, of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's 
Son," for a great number of devout persons, of 
God in his relations to humanity, so the image 
and the shrine of Juggernaut symbolize to the 
Hindus God in his relations to the world. 



CHAPTER XII. — China. 

SHANGHAI. 

" I '11 view the manners of the town, 
Peruse the traders, gaze upon the bixildings." 

— Comedy of Errors, Act i, sc. 2. 
"China dishes." 

— Meastire for Measure, Act ii, sc. 1. 
"Well, thereby hangs a tale." 

— Merry Wives of Windsor, Act i, sc. 4. 

An interesting city — The three foreign settlements: English, Ameri- 
can, French — Old Shanghai walled around — Population of the 
entire city not definitely known — The climate — The inhabitants — 
The influence of the Germans — The clubhouse — The German min- 
ister, Herr Von Brand — Shanghai society — A bracelet of brilliants 
is presented to Miss Beaudet — A peculiarity of the society — The 
theatre the finest in the East — A little Chinese boy is "made up" 
and plays the Duke of York — An incident in the performance of East 
Lynne — The theatre of the natives : its legendary liistory and its 
peculiarities — The historical plays — The comedies — A remark of 
Sir Philip Sidney on the English stage in 15S3 will apply to the 
Chinese stage of the present time — " The Birthday of the Moon " — 
The "mixed" court — Judge ChSn — A smart prisoner. 

On the eighth of April, I left Bombay on the 
Peninsular and Oriental steamer Khedive for 
Shanghai, by the way of Galle, Singapore, and 
Hong-Kong — a journey of about twenty-four days. 

Shanghai is an interesting city, and the sight 
as you get near to it most pleasing. You cross 
the bar at Woosung, about ten miles from 
Shanghai, and soon after steam into the river, 
an uninteresting sheet of water enough, the 
scenery flat on both sides, and nothing to please 
till you catch a view of the charming town, with 
its beautiful mansions and its extended harbor. 



SHANGHAI. 179 



Shanghcai is divided into three settlements : 
English, American, and French. The Chinese city 
of Shanghai proper is about two miles distant, 
with a wall around it similar to Canton, where 
the natives are not allowed to go out or come 
in without permission. The French settlement 
is, like all French colonies, the nearest approach 
to a small provincial town in France. The 
beauty of the modern portion of the city begins 
with the English settlement, which runs along 
the river for miles ; and the street facing it with 
its long line of grand, palatial buildings on one 
side, and a thousand masts of fine vessels on the 
other, is remarkably picturesque. 

" With silken streamers the young Phoebus fanning: 
Play with your fancies, and in them behold 
Upon the hempen tackle shipboys climbing; 
Hear the slirill whistle, which doth order give 
To sounds confus'd : behold the threadeu sails, 
Blown with th' invisible and creeping winds.*' 

Beyond this lies the American settlement, 
extending also along the bank of the river a 
considerable distance ; and the street which is 
thus continued is certainly one of the finest and 
most beautiful in the world, especially since 
electric light has been adopted. It is called the 
Bund, and no one can picture the beauty of it 
at night, when all the houses are illuminated 
with seeming myriads of variegated Chinese 
lanterns, the many-hued rays of which tint and 



180 AX AGTOB'S TOUB. 

color most fantastically the more powerful electric 
lights, giving a wonderful picturesqueness to 
objects which in the daytime seem quite ordinary ; 
add to this a tropical sky, fretted with golden 
fires; while a fleet of ships lies along the river, 
some inside and others close to the wharfs, with 
their different signal-lights full up, from which 
any one versed in nautical science may detect 
the merchantmen of every nation of the world. 

There are about ten thousand Europeans and 
one hundred thousand Chinese in these three 
settlements of the modern city of Shanghai ; 
while in the old walled town (Shanghai proper) 
there are perhaps hundreds of thousands more 
Chinese. However, on this point no one can 
be very correct, for not even the Chinese gov- 
ernment itself has arrived at any true estimate 
or census of the population. The beauty of 
the European and American settlements arises 
greatly from their remarkable cleanliness ; the 
only exception being some neighborhoods of 
the French, which are full of bad odors, and 
the streets of which are not kept with care. 

Shanghai has a long and healthy season, which 
extends from September to the end of May, 
during which period, with a few exceptional 
weeks of pretty cold weather in January and 
February, the climate is very refreshing and 
delightful. The month of June is hot, July 
hotter, and August " as hot," some European 
has said, " as hell." Be that as it may, these 



SHANGH/I. 181 



are the only disagreeable months in the year, 
otherwise the climate is lovely. 

The people of Shanghai, amongst whom the 
Germans preponderate socially and intellectually, 
are kind, enthusiastic, and very ready to give 
support to any effort of culture or art. It is 
no exaggeration to say that the Germans are 
the life and soul of this many-sided community, 
foremost in every public work, and the main- 
spring of all corporate action. 

" Germaus are honest men." 

They have one of the most comfortable and con- 
venient clubhouses in the world, which comprises, 
in addition to the club proper, a concert-hall, 
a ballroom, and a theatre. They are nearly all 
well-to-do people, many of them rich, and not 
a few of them persons of high culture. 

The time of my visit was most fortunate in 
having the German minister, His Excellency 
Herr Von Brand, on a diplomatic mission to 
Shanghai from Pekin, and whose society I 
enjoyed very frequently. On two occasions I met 
hiiu at the house of the German consul, Herr Von 
Krencki, where I dined with him, together with 
Admiral Blanc, of the frigate Strosh, and his 
staff. I also met his excellency at Herr Von 
Krause's, where I had the pleasure of meeting 
the Austrian consul, Herr Von Haase (who gave 
me a letter of introduction to the King of Siam), 
Herr Gniltzou, Herr Mendel, and Herr Grobien, 
with other leading citizens of Shanghai. 



182 AX AC (-J TOE'S TOUB. 



Herr Von Bran^,I is one of the most brilliant 
and best-informec\ . men I ever met in my life, 
not excepting L^ iord Lytton, John Forster, Tom 
Taylor, Lord Sf outhesk, and Charles Reade, who 
were my intim^ate friends; these were versed in 
several branc]iaes of literature and art, but Herr 
Von Brand is'v familiar with all. I do not stand 
singular in this ab^sertion, for he is thought of in 
the East as a secona^ Bismarck in statesmanship, 
while, as a man, all admKt that 

"He hath a daily beaut^" in his life." 

It has been his misfortune to iJ^e too good a 
Chinese scholar, and too acute an .jE astern diplo- 
matist, to displace him ; otherwise \iie would have 
made a great mark in Europe before this. But 
no one knows better than the Berl^in government, 
and those familiar with Chinese affairs, the great 
good this remarkable man has jVaccomplished in 
his capacity of minister to Tier i-tsin : first of all 
for the German nation, and indirectly for all 
Europe and America. Besides &iecuring numerous 
treaties of vast importance, hie has raised his 
nation to as proud and indfipendent a position 
as that of England or France in China, and he 
has shown Li Hung Chang, t^he cleverest premier 
Qibsoluta) China has ever jhad, that he is his 
equal on his own ground, if, indeed, he has not 
proved himself his superior in more than one 
transaction ; thus, all thingS; considered, it will be 
a long time before Germa.ny will have another 



SHANGHAI. 183 



representative to the Celestial court who will 
come up to Herr Von Brand in diplomatic skill, 
knowledge of human nature, and unswerving 
wisdom. 

He has been upward of fifteen years in China, 
and, as service in the East counts double, has 
long since been entitled to a pension. But it 
is to be hoped that he will not retire for years 
to come ; he is too great and too important a man 
to withdraw from public service so young ; for, 
although perfectly white-haired, he cannot be 
more than fifty years of age. I hold several 
charming letters from him, and his brilliant power 
of conversation and transcendent knowledge I 
shall never forget. 

I grew very fond of Shanghai society, and shall 
always look back upon the delightful evenings 
spent there, in which the hours passed as minutes 
in witty and refined conversation, with pleasure 
and gratitude. It would defy London, Paris, 
Berlin, Vienna, or New York, to bring together a 
more genial coterie than that which gathered on 
several occasions, after the play was over, at the 
little soupes at Krause's, Von Krencki's, Guiltzou's, 
Michelson's, or Mendel's. Here were represented 
diplomacy, the army and navy, commerce, science, 
and art, and with such perfect geniality and 
laisser-aller, that one was in doubt which was 
the more to be enjoyed — the champagne so 
excellent and free or the wit and esprit of the 
society. 



184 AN ACTOB'S TOUB. 

Picture a house as large as that of the Lite 
A. T. Stewart, in Fifth Avenue, with elegant 
and spacious reception-rooms, full of precious 
European, Chinese, Japanese, and Indian art- 
treasures : these leading into a delightfully cool 
dining-room, with a long table, capable of seat- 
ing from fifteen to twenty people, spread with 
the most delectable delicacies, choice wines, 
and sweetly decorated with rare flowers, while 
behind every chair stood a boy in his spotless, 
white dress, his sole business being to wait 
upon one particular guest, — and only those who 
have been in China can appreciate the perfec- 
tion of these servants, — picture this to your- 
self, and you will know what Shanghai has to 
offer in the way of the refinements of society, 
and get an idea of the beautiful scene in 
which I met so many distinguished persons. 
The conversations were of the richest, wittiest, 
and raciest nature, and the gayety and freedom 
were of a decorum and dignity which will always 
characterize the company of gentlemen though 
men of the world. Never for a moment did 
conversation flag, nor was a subject allowed to 
become wearisome, nor a sense of ennui felt. 

Miss Beaudet and a few other ladies were 
usually present at these reunions: indeed, they 
were quite as much in honor of her as they 
were of myself; for every one, including Herr 
Von Brand, had the greatest respect for her 
as a woman, and admiration for her genius as 



SHANGHAI. 185 



an artist. On the night of her benefit she re- 
ceived a magnificent bracelet of brilliants from 
her numerous admirers, and she was universally 
admitted to be the greatest favorite of all the 
actresses who have visited China. 

Shanghai society is peculiar in this, that the 
gentlemen have far more importance in it than 
frequently happens in Europe or America; yet 
there is no reason why the ladies should not 
sway the sceptre, save the ladies themselves. 
The true woman, as in Miss Beaudet's case, is 
recognized and welcomed at once to the very 
best circles. But the truth is, and it must be 
told, that, while the European gentlemen are of 
a most interesting, refined, and courteous nature, 
the European ladies, with some honorable excep- 
tions, are the reverse. Perhaps the true cause 
of this is to be found in the fact that they were 
spoiled from the outset. Only twenty years ago 
a European lady was regarded with curiosity 
and wonder in Shanghai, and consequently when- 
ever a citizen or an official went to Europe to 
import one of these precious creatures she was 
immediately lionized by all, fondled and petted 
to such an extent that in the end she was an 
utterly spoiled child in society. Now these fair 
importations have become more frequent, and 
consequently less thought of and wondered at, 
and there is little chance at the present time 
even of becoming, like poor Burns in Edinburgh 
society, the lion of a season ; but the European 



186 AN xWTOB'S' TOUE. 

ladies settled in Shanghai will not open their 
eyes to the fact, and put on all sorts of un- 
lovely airs, and imagine that they are slighted 
when they are not, or lionized when no one ever 
thought of lionizing ; and even continue to daub 
in the dark when rapturous regards decline 
toward them from their own want of attraction 
and loveliness, thinking gentlemen prefer a poor, 
painted shrew, to a fair, simple-hearted woman. 
In another respect likewise they have to thank 
themselves for their present lack of power in 
Shanghai society : they should not tolerate ladies 
of easy virtue, and easier conscience, who are 
able to make a display in dress, fashion, or 
carriages, but drive them out of the field by 
their own greater charms, fairer attractions, and 
sweeter manners ; but, alas ! they show none of 
these advantages, and abandon the ground to the 
fast, gay-living women, who are thus left in 
possession, virtually without any rivals whatso- 
ever. This is a great pity, as there are many 
young men in Shanghai who would like to choose 
a wife from amongst the families of the place, 
but are now obliged to go to Europe when they 
feel inclined to "bear the yoke." 

" I 'm ashamed that women are so simple 
To offer war, where they should kneel for peace. 
Or seek for rule, supremacy, and sway, 
When they are bound to serve, love, and obey." 

The Shanghai Theatre is the finest in the East. 
It was built by amateurs, who occasionally play 



SHANGHAI. 187 



in it themselves, and keep it in good order 
and first-class respectability. 

We had no difficulty to manage our plays, but 
on one occasion an amusing incident occurred. 
We were rehearsing Richard the Third, and with 
impatience awaiting the arrival of the boy who 
was to play the Duke of York. At last a little 
Chinese lad came with a letter from a friend of 
mine. It ran thus: — 

" Bear Bandmanii, — At last, after long search- 
ing, I have found you a Duke of York, but he 
has a tail. Does it matter?" 

I laughed and looked at the bright little fellow 
in his Chinese clothes, wooden shoes, and long, 
very long queue hanging to the ground. " Can 
you speak English, my boy ? " " Yes, sir ! " was 
the clear and ringing answer. Here was a 
youthful Celestial who could pronounce the " R," 
and who was ready to play an English prince, and 
well he did it too. He looked capital. His 
queue, was liidden under a large, blonde, curly 
wig ; his yellow face beautifully pinked ; his nose 
received a white stroke on the top to give it 
more prominence ; his eyes a full underlining to 
produce greater rotundity ; his feet soft leather 
shoes for greater ease : with these additions to 
his features, and changes in his dress, the boy 
was a complete success ; and spoke the part as 
well as I have ever had it done : and for the first 



188 AN ACTOR'S TOUR. 

time here was Shakespeare uttered in pure 
English before the public by a Chinese boy. The 
world moves fast in these days, and perhaps the 
time may come when the " Land of Flowers " 
may give a Shylock, a Hamlet, an Othello, a 
Macbeth, a King Lear, to the audiences of Lon- 
don, Paris, and New York, notwithstanding the 
present wretched condition of the native stage, 
and that peculiar attribute of the Chinese, held 
so sacred and inviolable, even to death, the 
queue; which I didn't find an obstacle to my 
very successful little Chinese Duke of York. 

During our month's stay in Shanghai we played 
Hamlet, Othello, The Merchant of Venice, 
Romeo and Juliet, Richard the Third, Narcisse, 
East Lynne, and Dead or Alive. 

On the evening of East Lynne, there was an 
unusual feature in the performance. The actor 
who plays Sir Francis Levison is generally hand- 
cuffed on the stage, and on this occasion there 
was no exception to the rule ; but, unfortunately, 
the property-man, a native, had forgotten to ask 
for the key when he borrowed the manacles from 
the constable, and looked with amazement at 
the actor when he heard the latter making me 
a request, after he had finished his part, who 
was, of course, desirous to be released from his 
tedious bondage. 

" The gee ? I no got gee." 

"How am I to get rid of them, Johnny?" 
asked the bewildered actor. 



SHANGHAI. 189 



"No way me know savie you," was the reply. 

" Hang you, fool ! I 've got to play in the 
farce ; run and get the key ! " cried the now 
enraged actor. 

Johnny ran, but did n't come back, and the now 
much-suifering actor was obliged, after an apology 
which the audience took good naturedly, to play 
the lover in the farce handcuffed. But even this 
was not all, for the constable from whom the 
Chinaman borrowed them could not be found, 
and the miserable Sir Francis was obliged either 
to sleep in them, or to send for a locksmith to file 
them off, which, when the evening's performance 
was over, of course he did. Early next morning 
Johnny sent the key into the actor's room by a 
comrade, and, as might be supposed, he feared 
to show his face at the theatre for some days. 

The Chinese theatre proper is a peculiar insti- 
tution in its origin, its nature, its style, and 
its performances. Certainly, to our Occidental 
notions, there is nothing charming in it, and all 
true dramatic art is conspicuously absent. The 
Celestials do not strive after perfection in acting 
and the drama, and stand much in need of the 
advice Hamlet gave the players : — 

" Speak the speech, I pray you, . . . trippinglj'' on the 
tongue : but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, 
I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not 
saw tlie air too much with your hand, thus : but use all 
gently : for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may 
say) whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and 



190 AN AGTOB'S TOUE. 

beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it 
offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated 
fellow tear a i^assion to tatters, to very rags, to split the 
ears of the groundlings ; who, for the most part, are 
capable of nothing but inexiilicable dumb shows and 
noise. I would have such a fellow whipj)ed for o'erdoing 
Termagant ; it out-herods Herod : pray you, avoid it. 

"Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be 
your tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the 
action ; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not 
the modesty of nature ; for anything so overdone is from 
the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first, and 
now, was, and is, to hold, as "t were, the mirror up to 
Nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own 
image, and the very age and body of the time his form and 
pressure. Now this, overdone, or come tardy off, though 
it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious 
grieve ; the censure of which one must, in your allowance, 
o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be players, 
that I have seen plaj^, — and heard others praise, and that 
highly, — not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the 
accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor 
man, have so strutted, and bellowed, that I have thought 
some of nature's journeymen had made men, and not made 
them well, they imitated humanity so abominably." 

There is a constant strain and stiffness in their 
speech, movements, and demeanor, which is awk- 
ward and ridiculous enough. 

However, a very poetic legend lies at the basis 
of their stage that we can appreciate. In this it 
is told, and all the Chinese believe it doubtlessly, 
how, once upon a time, the Emperor Tong-Ming- 
Wang, of the Tong dynasty, was translated to 
the moon, together with his wives, concubines, 



SHANGHAI. 191 



and all the retinue of his court, and that, while 
there, they saw hosts of fair maidens in tableaux ; 
and it is to this wonderful legend of the voyage 
to the moon, with its vision of celestial drama 
enacted by Phoebe and her attendant virgins, that 
China owes the establishment of its theatre, and 
the performance of what are called ancient his- 
torical plays. 

Every town of the empire has its theatre, and 
it is a well-known fact that, wherever the Chinese 
congregate in considerable numbers in any foreign 
land, they are sure to build a purely national 
theatre. It is so in San Francisco, Singapore, 
Rangoon, Honolulu, Portland, and many other 
places which have large colonies of Chinese. 

In Shanghai, the native theatre is a great 
institution, there being no less than four large 
ones in the English settlement, and another in 
the French, in full swing all the 3^ear round. 
These places of amusement are open nearly all 
day, but from seven o'clock in the evening till 
midnight they are crowded. Many of them em- 
ploy a large staff of actors, often as many as 
one hundred and twenty-five or one hundred and 
fifty, all males ; and the stars receive much honor 
from the people. The theatre is usually a large, 
square building, and in the private boxes, stalls, 
and indeed in every part of the house, the seats 
have small tables before them, much after the 
London Music Hall fashion, and during the per- 
formance you will see the audience regaling 



192 AN ACTOB'S TOUB. 

themselves with pears, oranges, mangos, saucers 
full of roasted water-melon seeds, small, green 
cups of tea, which contrast with the vermilion- 
colored sheets of paper on which the programme 
is printed, or with large hubble-bubble tobacco- 
pipes of brass or silver, while in the intervals of 
such festivities thej take a cloth soaked in hot 
water and steaming, which is handed to them by 
a coolie, and wipe the perspiration off their hands 
and faces — a custom surely that has much reason 
in it, and, in that climate, most refreshing. 

The stage is a platform standing about four feet 
above the level of the floor of the pit, and illumi- 
nated by primitive gas-fixtures in the way of foot- 
lights. There is no scenery about tlie stage, and 
the back of it is only a partition of panels of 
carved wood. In the centre, however, is the 
inevitable large mirror which has such infinite 
charms for the Chinese ; perhaps every one is 
handsome in his own eyes, and the plainest of 
the Chinese (though it would surely puzzle even 
the gods to decide the point) has untold pleasure 
in beholding a reflection of himself. Still, it has 
a purpose beyond the gratification of vanity, for 
the actors change their robes and head-dresses 
in front of it, instead of retiring to the back of 
the stage. 

The orchestra is composed of seven or eight 
old men, who sit around two tables at the back 
of the stage, and who, with drums, gongs, cymbals, 
flutes, fiddles, and pieces of hard wood, make 



SHANGHAI. 193 



as much noise as any band on the face of the 
earth, and far more unearthly than most of them, 
and they seem to play the same tune all night. 
" The trumpets, sackbuts, psalteries and fifes, 
tabors and cymbals, and the shouting Celestials^ 
make the moon dance." The plays enacted at 
the native theatres are chiefly historical, and 
some of them go on for years before being 
completed ; the whole histor;^ of a great dynasty 
is presented in one play, part of it being given 
every day. There are, however, lighter pieces, 
more like our comedy, completed in two or three 
acts. But even these are presented without 
scener}^ the costumes only being studied, and the 
characters make up their styles with considerable 
skill ; the dialogue is the main thing, and the 
imagination of the audience is left to supply 
all other accessories. The remark made by Sir 
Philip Sidney, in regard to the English stage 
in 1583, has been applied by Sir John Davis to 
the Chinese stage of the present time, and it is 
most appropriate : — 

"Now you shall have three ladies walk to 
gather flowers, and then we must believe the 
stage to be a garden, ^y and . by we have news 
of shipwreck in the same place ; then we are 
to blame if we accept it not for a rock. Upon 
the back of that comes out a hideous monster 
with fire and smoke, and then the miserable 
beholders are bound to take it for a cave ; while 
in the meantime two armies fly in represented 



194 AN ACTOB'S TOUR. 

with four swords and bucklers, and then what 
hard heart will not receive it for a pitched field ? " 

The historical plays are a strange medley, in 
which acrobatic feats, somersaults, sword exercise, 
fighting, singing, dancing, very much resembling 
the Scotch reel, and a thousand and one other 
things, are mixed up with the slow developments 
of the romances of history embraced in their plots. 
It must be admitted that the men are often very 
clever in imitating the appearance and character 
of that fair, "tottering lily," — who is never 
allowed to show herself on the stage, — the 
Chinese woman. 

The fifteenth day of the eighth month of the 
year, according to Chinese reckoning, is the 
occasion on which they celebrate the " Birthday 
of the Moon," which occupies so conspicuous a 
rank and plays so important a part, in many .of 
their myths and legends. That night is a great 
time with the Chinese for worshiping their 
gods in the temples, and for burning incense 
in the streets and public places of their cities; 
and on that night the gates of the cities are 
open until midnight, whereas on all other days, 
excepting New Year's eve, they are closed at 
ten o'clock. 

"The Chinese call that particular day the 
Birthday of the Moon, because, according to 
their legends, the Emperor Ming-Tai-Tso, the 
first monarch of the Ming dynasty, — when out 
with his army and being sore pressed for want 



STTAyOIIAL 195 



of supplies to sustain las men, — sent out forag- 
ing-parties, on the fifteenth day of the eighth 
moon ; but tlie darkness was at fust so great 
that they couhl not see where to obtain anything 
in the fields, until the moon suddenly shone 
with great brilliancy, and the soldiers were aided 
by her light to go to fields and gather in crops 
for food to the army. Why they had not looked 
after this in daylight, does not appear from this 
legend ; that difficulty is ignored for the sake 
of the story. The emperor was so much pleased 
by the wonderful appearance of the moon at 
what the legend makes-believe was an oppor- 
tune moment, that he ordered the day to be 
ever afterward celebrated as the Birthday of 
the Moon. Another peculiar custom still in 
vogue has its origin in the stor}'' of this emperor's 
foraging-party, namely, that it is still the custom 
in China that any one can go to the fields or 
to the houses of the farmers on this particular 
night, and take whatever he pleases, in the 
way of grain, vegetables, or food of any kind, 
without let or hindrance. The foragers of 
Ming-Tai-Tso's army, on that eventful night, 
discovered a peculiar root, which on trial, after 
cooking, was discovered to be good for food, 
and a root to be desired to make one enjoy 
mutton-chops; that root was the potato. Old 
Ireland cannot claim the potato in the face of 
this legend ; but whether the Celestial foragers 
also found trace of the ancestors of the American 



196 AN ACTOB'S TOUn. 

potato-bug, the legend sayetli not. Another 
interesting legend (already referred to) is that, 
on the fifteenth day of the eighth moon, the 
Emperor Tong-Ming-Wang, of the Tong dynasty, 
visited the moon, in company with his secretary, 
wives, servants, and retainers, and in that lumi- 
nary they saw a party of young girls of tender 
years, who were playing musical instruments 
and acting tableaux and ancient plays ; and 
to this legend the origin of Chinese theatres is 
attributed." " Good my lord, . . . see the players 
well bestowed. . . . Let them be well used; for 
they are the abstract, and brief chronicles, of the 
time." 

The mixed court at Shanghai is certainly one 
of the most unique institutions ever devoted to 
the administration of justice. It was instituted 
specially on behalf of the foreign settlements, 
English, French, and American ; all civil cases 
are tried there, in which the plaintiffs are of 
other nationalities and the defendants Chinese ; 
and the trials of the latter for all criminal 
offences against the laws of the foreign settle- 
ments take place there. The Chinese magis- 
trate, Chen, a mandarin of the seventh order, 
is the judge of this court; but foreign assessors 
sit on the bench with him, who have judicial 
powers, and whose duty it is to look after the 
strict administration of justice in all that per- 
tains to those of foreign nationalities. I am 
indebted to my friend, Mr. W. Macfarlane, of 



SHANGHAI. 197 



the Shanghai Mercury^ whose " Sketches in 
Shanghai " contain so much interesting matter, 
for the following extracts descriptive of this 
institution : — 

" The court is located in the Maloo, the ' hall 
of justice,' forming part of the mandarin's yamen. 
A terror to evildoers is witnessed at the entrance 
to the yamen ; close to the street pavement, and 
flanking the gateway, are two enclosures, or 
huge cages, formed by strong wooden bars, 
extending from the ground nearly to the first 
roof of the porch. They look something like 
John Bunyan's idea of the cage in which Faith- 
ful was imprisoned at Vanity Fair ; they are 
for the same purpose as the stocks were 
used in England many years ago ; and here 
these Celestial cages are filled with prisoners, as 
part of their punishment, and to make others 
fear and tremble. The bars are almost wide 
enough for a lean fellow to wriggle through ; 
but the awkward thing against such an attempt 
is that all the prisoners are so well taken care 
of, lest anybody should steal them, that each 
fellow is adorned with a huge wooden collar, 
about two foot square, the framework firmly 
secured, and an ornamental chain of quarter- 
inch malleable-iron links attaches the collar to 
its wearer and joins him to the next prisoner, and 
so round them all, joining in one inseparable 
heap half a dozen Celestial vagabonds and all 
their decorations in woodwork and iron. Their 



198 AN ACTOR'S TO UB. 

hands are free so that they can use the chop- 
sticks, their supply of rice is plentiful, and they 
are happy enough, as they sit there with one 
peak of the wooden collar resting on the breast, 
the corners covering each shoulder, and the other 
peak away up at the back of the head. Their 
position is rendered more lively, too, from the 
presence of friends moving about on the pave- 
ment; cooks and other itinerant street-mer- 
chants have their stalls close to the bars, and 
the prisoners are evidently comforted at times 
with more than prisoner's fare, and most of them 
are able to get hold of a pipe and tobacco. 

" We pass through the portals, emblazoned with 
demoniacal pictures of mighty Chinamen in red, 
blue, green, and all colors in confusion, making 
flaming combinations that would be worth money 
to a traveling penny-show. We enter a spacious 
courtyard, having on the right and left small 
houses occupied by retainers of the yamSn ; in 
front of ns is the huge picture of a nonde- 
script monster. Is it a dragon? Well, it looks 
wild enough, hideous enough, and, as far as 
paint goes, extravagant enough to make half a 
dozen good-sized, decent-looking dragons. This 
monster is said to be an emblem of 'avarice,' 
and it is painted there on a screen, in the open 
entrance to the mandarin's official residence, 
as a remembrancer that avarice is a sin which 
officials are to guard against, and never — hardly 
ever — do such a thing as squeeze. ... 



SHANGHAI. 199 



"The first time we went there, many months 
ago, we instinctively and witli clue reverence 
took off our hat; but soon discovered that this 
was a superfluous bit of etiquette while in a 
' mixed ' court, and the free and easy manner 
of the proceedings became more apparent when 
we observed a friend smoking a cigar. Our 
notions of the court were upset; we had just 
thrown away a cigar after a few puffs ; we had 
come into court reverentially with uncovered head; 
we were out of it in both cases. 'Is smoking 
allowed?' we asked our friend in a whisper, 
which the assessor heard, and made reply : ' Oh, 
yes, smoke away ; smoking is the rule here.' At 
this time, old Chen was taking a cheroot from 
his cigar-case ; he lighted it with a match, and 
then handed a cheroot to the assessor. Four or 
five cigars were all going like so many houses 
on fire in a minute after that ; and we never 
think of dropping a cigar amongst the Celestials 
at the door, or taking off our hat, when we go 
to court again. . . . 

" Chen sits near the centre of the bench, with 
the assessor on his right hand. There is room 
for three or four seats on the bench, and some- 
times there are as many occupied, when the 
foreign consuls may be specially interested in any 
case. In his winter costume, — Avith great fur- 
lined silk coat embroidered in mandarin style, 
and his upturired cap with peacock feather, — 
Chen presents a more dignified appearance tlian 



200 AN A CTOB' S TOUIi. 

in his thin, summer costume. The old man — for 
he is over sixty, and looks like seventy — seems 
oppressed with the heat and overcome with 
fatigue. He often sits bareheaded and is seen 
to be very bald; there is barely enough natural 
hair on his scalp to form a queue, the tail which 
hangs thereby being nearly all » of silk. There is 
nothing very remarkable about his features; his 
expression is rather pleasant; eyes small, dark, 
and keen ; his nose short but not too broad ; his 
upper lip rather large, only a few gray hairs at 
each side, and a long distance between these two 
remnants of a moustache ; his cheekbones high, 
and cheeks fallen in slightly ; he is not as sleek 
as he might have been some years ago ; and the 
wrinkles of age are upon liis forehead. To see 
him sit quietly amid all the squabbling of pris- 
oners and runners before him, one would not 
think he had so much vigor left in him as he 
sometimes displays when he scolds a prisoner. 
On the bench before him he keeps a huge 
leaden inkstand, with tablets of Chinese ink; 
and there is a curious-looking article in lead, 
which is on the table behind this stand. It 
is in the shape of a human hand, cut at the 
wrist, and is said to be a representation of 
Buddha's hand ; it stands on the wrist as the 
base, and the fingers are wide apart ; it is much 
larger than the biggest hand of flesh and blood 
ever seen ; if it were stuck on a broom-handle 
it would make a good back-scratcher for the 



SHANGHAI. 201 



greatest Celestial giant ever heard of. This 
peculiar article is the simple device which serves 
as a pen or pencil rack, to prevent the bench 
being dirtied by the official red ink used in 
writing on the documents whicli come to Chen's 
hands. Besides these articles mentioned, there 
are of course the small teapot and smaller teacups 
always at his left hand ; his cigar-case, and a box 
of matches that light only on the box, always 
directly before him ; and there are still two 
other things worth mentioning — these are of 
simple construction, frequent in use, and yet the 
use of them is very hard to see. They are two 
pieces of hard wood, about twelve inches long, 
and about an inch in thickness and breadth. 
When Chen is in a rage, — when he shouts as 
loudly as he can, and uses up all the strong 
expletives in his vocabulary, hurling his wild 
thunders at an unfortunate prisoner, — the grand 
climax of his invective is reached when he seizes 
one of these pieces of hard wood, and strikes the 
other piece, making a tremendous noise that 
almost drowns his voice, and which, we suppose, 
he considers an effectual means of striking terror 
into the heart of the person who is thus so forcibly 
and violently admonished. When he is beating 
these sticks, he looks as if he were going to shy 
one of them at the prisoner's head, and some 
of the prisoners look as if they expected it too, 
and Avere preparing to dodge it. . . . 

"In this court there is no such thing as perjury. 



202 AN actoh's tour. 

for the Chinese ' swear not at all.' Lying, there- 
fore, is unrestrained; the biggest liar has most 
chance of winning his case against a neighbor, 
who is conscientious, or another who tells lies, 
but is not 'cute enough in the invention of them. 
The criminal who has the best chance of getting 
off is the one who tells most lies himself, or who 
can hire other liars, better than himself, to speak 
in his behalf. And, though the lies are found 
out, as they often are, being too glaring, or not 
cunningly devised, the prisoner is none the less 
thought of, because he did his level best as a liar ; 
he will only lose his case because he did not do 
it well enough. If a Chinaman is in a fix, either 
civil or criminal offences bringing trouble on his 
head, he can, for a slight consideration in the 
shape of a few hundred cash^ or a few dollars, 
if the case is worth it, get any number of his 
guileless brethren to declare that black is white, 
or white black — either way as the dollars go. . . . 
" One of the smartest tricks we have heard 
of being done by a prisoner at this court was 
when three or four men were convicted of some 
paltry offence, and each of them fined twenty 
cents, with the alternative of three days' impris- 
onment. All the prisoners except one made great 
lamentation, and tried to excite compassion by 
their cries and tears ; but he got up from his 
knees at once, as soon as he heard the sentence, 
boldly stepped forward to the magistrate's bench, 
tabled his wealth in payment of the fine, and 



SHANGHAI. 203 



hurried out of court. A few minutes after- 
ward, but when it was too hxte, his twenty-cent 
piece was found to be a brass one." "To have 
an open ear, a quick eye, and a nimble hand, is 
necessary for a cutpurse." 

From occurrences of this sort in the mixed 
court it would seem that Chan's " pieces of hard 
wood," together with all the other symbols of the 
authority and the majesty of law, even including 
Buddha's "hand," are impotent of effect upon 
certain sensitive-souled Celestials, and daringly 
set at defiance. Maybe it is there, owing to 
Chen's lenient humanity, as Duke Vinceutio says 
in Measure for Measure : — 

" We have strict statutes, and most biting laws 

(The needful bits and curbs for headstrong steeds), 

Wliich for these fourteen years * we have let sleep ; 

Even like an o'ergrown lion in a cave, 

That goes not out to prey : Now, as fond fathers. 

Having l)ound up the threat'ning twigs of birch 

Only to stick it in their children's sight, 

For terror, not to use ; in time the rod 

Becomes more mock'd than f ear'd : so our decrees, 

Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead; 

And libert}^ plucks justice by the nose ; 

The baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart 

Goes all decorum." 

* Ch^ has been judge in the mixed court perhaps rather more. — [Ed. 



CHAPTER XIII. — China. 

HONG-KONG. 

" The purest treasure mortal times afford 
Is spotless reputation; tliis aw^ay, 
Men are but gilded loam, or painted clay. 
A jewel in a ten times barr'd-up chest 
Is a bold spirit in a loyal heart. 
Mine honor is my life; both grow in one; 
Take honor from me, and my life is done." 

— Richard II, Act i, sc. 1. 
" Defend your reputation, or bid farewell to your good life forever." 
— Merry Wives of Windsor, Act Hi, sc. 3. 
" Beware 
Of entrance to a quarrel ; but, being iu, 
Bear't, that the opposer may beware of thee." 

— Hamlet, Act i, sc. 3. 
"Love all, trust a few, 
Do wrong to none; be able for thine enemy 

.... be checked for silence. 
But never tax'd for speech/' 

— All's Well That Ends Well, Act i, sc. 1. 

Hotels in China — An action for libel — The English law — The 
" Rousby " case — The late lord chief justice of England — The 
late Sergeant Parry — Mr. Gordon, the scenic-artist — Mr. Willing, 
the London theatrical advertising-agent — The expensiveness of 
truth — Sir George Phillippo. 

I TOOK my farewell of the Shanghai public in 
Hamlet, and on the third of June, 1882, left 
with my company for Hong-Kong. There I made 
the hotel called after the town, " The Hong- 
Kong," my headquarters. It is kept by two 
Parsees named Dorobyee and Hingkee, and 
considered the best establishment of the kind 



HONG-KONG. 205 



in China, and it is certainly equal to any of them. 
They are all bad. 

My original intention was, in consequence of 
the lateness of the season and the approaching 
hot weather, to limit my stay to a couple of 
nights; but the pressure was so great, and the 
success so thorough, that I consented to extend 
it to six performances. "■L'homme propose, et 
Dieu dispose." I was destined to stay even longer 
than that, longer than my wildest dreams antici- 
pated, for suddenly I found myself involved in 
a serious law-suit, and once a man puts an action 
in the Chinese courts^ there 's no telling how long 
it will remain there. However, my own case was 
settled quicker than many. It was a case of libel, 
which I felt compelled to bring against a man in 
Hong-Kong who had, in tlie most unwarranted 
manner, attacked my character and abused my 
good name ; and this by a method so pre- 
eminently un-English that I have only to mention 
it to show its vileness to all who respect justice 
after the English fashion, which, perhaps, as I am 
a German, it may not be unfitting in me to say 
here that there is no loftier standard in judicial 
matters to be found anywhere throughout the 
civilized world. The English law, built on the 
basis of the ancient Roman "corpus juris civilis," 
comprised in The Code, The Pandects, The Insti- 
tutes, and The Novelise, which the splendid 
genius of Justinian shaped fur the world, and, 
augmented by the precedents and sanctions of 



206 AN'ACTOli'S TOUB. 

long centuries, is a tribunal by which, if a man 
is condemned, he is condemned : while, if he is 
acquitted, he is free indeed, and may well be 
regarded as such by all true men. 

In 1877 it was my misfortune to appear as the 
defendant in a case in which the late Mrs. Rousby 
was the plaintiff, which caused considerable 
sensation in England at the time, especially in 
dramatic circles, and certainly much discomfort 
to myself, for I was the unhappy victim of one 
of the grossest efforts ever made by one person 
to injure the character and reputation of another. 
The action arose in this way : I had translated 
and adjusted to the English stage the play of 
Herr Mosenthal, called " Madeleine Morel," from 
the German, the copyright of which I sold to Mrs. 
Rousby, subject to certain conditions, among 
others, these: that no changes were to be made 
in the pla}'" apart from my consent, and that I was 
to superintend the rehearsals of it. At one of 
these rehearsals, in a moment of impatience occa- 
sioned by wilful and constant violations of the 
above conditions, I snatched the manuscript out 
of the prompter's hands and was about to quit 
the theatre, when I found myself suddenly 
involved in an imbroglio with him and the stage- 
manager. The latter laid hold of the book, and 
remarked that, as the play was now the property 
of Mrs. Rousby, I had no right to take it away, 
and the truth of this assertion struck me so 
forcibly that I immediately relaxed my hold and 



HONG-KONG. 207 



left him in undisputed possession of the manu- 
script. I had acted on impulse, but at the bottom 
there was the conviction (which, by the way, the 
lord chief justice who tried the case that sprung 
from it afterward proved justifiable and correct) 
that, although an author or translator sell his 
work, he does not sell his brain with it, and no 
buyer has a right to trifle with the latter by 
making changes in the contents, the form given to 
it, or the modes of expression adopted, that the 
knowledge and judgment of the author would 
not sanction ; for if this were permitted the 
author's reputation might be injured. Therefore, 
though he sell his work and relinquish all claim 
to pecuniary advantage from it, he has still the 
right to insist that it shall not be caricatured or 
marred by the injudiciousness and ignorance of 
the buyer or any other persons. Still I felt that 
perhaps in my indignation I had gone a little 
too far, and left the theatre. But on the next 
day something far more serious was made of it, 
for Mrs. Rousby was not without iinagination, 
which all women possess to some extent. In her 
case, indeed, it must have attained an enormous 
strength and deposed the serene image of truth 
and overthrown conscience ; for she brought an 
action against me in which it was maintained 
that I had struck her a cruel, angry blow, and, 
to borrow the words of Dicaiopolis, from " The 
Acharnians," of Aristophanes, which well fit my 
own case, 



208 AN ACTOR'S TOUB. 

" forced rae into court 
And slander'd, and beslobber'd me with lies, 
And splutter'd like Cycloborus, and slang'd me, 
So that I really felt myself half dead, 
Being dragg'd, all draggled, thro' that case's mire." 

The case, however, was tried before the highest 
court in England, and completely done away 
with, no stain being left on my name or honor as 
a gentleman : it was proved that I was a man 
more sinned against than sinning. It was this 
old insult that was dished up again by my 
Hong-Kong libeler, — 

" Men that make 
Envy and crooked malice nourishment, 
Dare bite the best," — 

who, not knowing how to sufficiently hurt and 
sting to satisfy his spite, incautiously and inad- 
visedly, most surely, for even the devil seems 
sometimes to be found napj^ing, or, at least 
outwits himself in ways he deems most sure to 
bring defeat and wretchedness to others, repeated 
and circulated the old Rousby accusation. 

This I determined to wipe out from the mind 
of the Hong-Kong public root and branch. Of 
course it would have been very easy to 
have moved on, and soon to have shifted one's 
quarters beyond the libeler's reach. I, how- 
ever, usually "take the bull by the horns," and 
I made no exception on this occasion. To me 
there were only two ways open : either to chastise 



HONG-KONG. 209 



the calumniator with a horsewhipping, perhaps 
the more effectual ; or to take refuge in the law. 
My friends guided me rightly, and, on June 16, 
Frazer Smith was committed for trial on two 
counts in the police-court in Hong-Kong. 

" Against the undivulg'd pretence I fight 
Of treasonous malice." 

It is no desire to play the martyr that has led 
me to unearth in these pages a great wrong to 
which I was subjected years ago : indeed, I would 
gladly have let it rest in the realm of silence 
to which I had consigned it ; my sense of 
innocence, and the vindication of it in the eyes 
of all others by the court of Queen's Bench, being 
amply suflBcient to render it terrorless ; but since 
the story of my tour in China would be incomplete 
without reference to the Hong-Kong libel case 
that grew out of this infamous action, I feel I 
must treat it, once for all, fully here, for, as 
Henry Ward Beecher has said himself, "I know 
the bitterness of venomous lies." When the 
Rousby case (a name I hold in pity and detesta- 
tion, and which I have here for the first time, 
during the years that have intervened, written 
down) was settled in my favor, it was my early 
intention to place before the public, in printed 
form, an account of some circumstances connected 
with it which were not explained in court, for 
who under such provocation does not contem- 
plate turning pamphleteer ? In England, in such 



210 AN AC TOE'S TOUIL 

cases, the defendant's lips are closed, and he can 
only speak through his counsel. My counsellors 
were good and able men, but practised that 
reservation peculiar to lawyers (and to the clergy 
perhaps), and many things important to the case 
were not brought out at all. This to some extent 
was due, perhaps, to the judge himself; who, 
vexed that the case was not conducted to his own 
liking, for he looked upon the matter as a mere 
theatrical squabble, which ought to have ended 
by the parties shaking hands and making up 
in open court, kept intentionally certain particu- 
lars relating to the prosecutor in- the background, 
who, as he said, was now standing upon her trial. 
And I must here say that, had not the decision 
of the late lord chief justice protected her, I 
should certainly have subsequently prosecuted 
her for perjury; for never in the record of the 
court of Queen's Bench was there a more 
glaring case of perjury than the one Rousby vs. 
Bandmann. 

My counsellors, however, did not sanction the 
adoption and carrying-out of the pamphlet idea ; 
indeed, the principal of my advisers, the late 
Sergeant Parry, was strongly opposed to such 
action on my part. He said: "I implore you, 
Bandmann, not to do any such thing, at least not 
at the present time, when your mind is too much 
excited about the circumstances of the case and 
indignation so strong in you." Eight years 
have almost passed, but when I think of the 



HONG-KONG. 211 



wrong that was done me in that charge, and 
the other wrongs that have followed as a fruit 
of it, I feel as deep and strong indignation now 
as I did then, at the blackness of the lie that 
lay at the heart of it, and to my dying day shall 
maintain my innocence, for no more diabolical 
untruth could have fallen from the lips of " the 
father of lies " himself. There were upward of 
thirty persons present on the occasion the assault 
was said to have occurred, but none of them, 
save an old man, who lived upon her bounty, 
attested to my even taking hold of the woman, ' 
or lifting my hand against her, and the bruises 
which she said my hand had inflicted were 
known to have been produced in quite other 
ways; but there were names and circumstances 
in the case which we were obliged to withhold 
from fear of incurring great misery to others, 
and perhaps destroying the happiness of several 
homes. I will name one only of many instances. 
A young girl, whose evidence had some value 
on my side, was asked by the chief justice : — 

" What had you to do so late as twelve 
o'clock at night in the streets ? Was that a 
time for a decent girl to be there ? " 

The judge then looked at the jury, which, of 
course, was synonymous Mdth, " Take heed of her, 
she is not to be believed." The young girl 
looked at me, but my lips were sealed by the 
court ; and she had been warned under no 
circumstances to implicate, even by a hint. 



212 AJSfAGTOH'S TOUR. 

other people, therefore she blushed and was 
silent. Now this girl, smitten as she was by 
the satirical remark of the judge, might have 
given him such an easy answer, and such a 
truthful one withal, for at that time she was 
on an errand for Mrs. Rousby, who was her 

mistress, and had two letters, one for , and 

the other for his wife. The one for con- 
tained the following menace : " Except you send 
ten pounds by the bearer of this, she has another 
letter for your wife." She got the ten pounds, 
which were handed to Mrs. Rousby, and that is 
what she was doing so late in the street ; but 
she was strictly forbidden to mention the fact, 
for the name of the person miglit have ruined 
an entire family. There were many instances 
similar to this, which, if they had been allowed 
to come out, would have given the public a 
clearer conception of the character of the pros- 
ecutor, but which, out of consideration for 
others, had to be kept in the background. 
Nevertheless, all this was painfully unjust to 
me, who was sitting there absolutely innocent 
of the charge this woman had brought against 
me. So, too, was the "stand-off" attitude of 
some persons whose evidence might have given 
additional confirmation to that which was in 
my favor. I remember when I met Mr. Gordon, 
the scenic-artist, in Sydney, on my last visit, 
he said, in the presence of others : — 

" Bandmann, that Rousby case was an infa- 



HON(d-KONG. 213 



mous concoction of lies. I stood at the back 
of the stage and saw the whole row from 
beginning to the end. You never struck her 
nor pushed her." 

" But why did n't you come forward and say 
so as a witness, like the rest ? " said I. 

" Well, really, you know, Bandmann, I did n't 
want to be drawn into it," was his reply. 

And this was unfortunately the way with 
several others besides Mr. Gordon ; but how a 
true man can justify himself in such conduct I 
have never been able to understand, for surely 
the duty one man owes to another, in such 
circumstances, is to come manfully forward and 
speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing 
but the truth. 

Mr. Willing, the theatrical advertising-agent, 
of London, told me that Mrs. Rousby wanted 
him to settle the affair with me for two 
hundred pounds ; but that he knew it was no 
good approaching me with such a proposal. In 
this he judged rightly, for I was determined 
the case should go on, and made no overtures 
to settle it outside the court whatsoever. I 
wished the world to hear and judge of the 
truth or untruth of the charge, and 1 was too 
proud and conscious of my innocence to fear 
the result. So for two days the Queen's Bench 
was occupied with the grievance of Mrs. 
Rousby, whose strong point against me she thus 
stated : — 



214 AN AGTOB'S TOUR. 



" With one hand he held the manuscript of 
the five acts, five separate books, with hard, 
cardboard covers ; with the other lie took me 
by the hand, and with the other he clinched 
his fist and struck me." 

The only remark which was made upon this 
absurd statement was by my counsel, who said : 
" He must have had three hands, then." 

At last, however, the twelve " honest men and 
true " made an end of it by bringing in a verdict 
for me, and my character was cleared in the 
eyes of the world. I discovered afterward, 
however, that the truth was either not made 
for the present world, or, at least, can only at 
times be within the reach of rich men, for that 
little action cost me for my own expenses four- 
teen hundred pounds (seven thousand dollars), 
so that, had I have given my accuser two hundred 
pounds to have hushed the matter, I should 
have saved twelve hundred pounds; however, 
although I was not at that time rich, I had 
enough to pay those expenses and to spare, and 
am glad that I allowed the case to go on; for 
some things are infinitely dearer to me than 
money, and I regard my good name, honor, 
character, reputation, as amongst them.* So, 
though I still remembered what an expensive 

*Mrs. Rousby, I regret to say, died five months after the above- 
mentioned trial from the effect of habits which for many years had 
sullied tlie splendor of what otherwise would liave been a grand career. 
We would in no case, least of all in j^resent circumstances, " set down 
aught in malice," but it is necessary for the reader to be informed 



HONG-KONG. 215 

thing the truth is, I resolved, notwithstanding, 
to prosecute my Hong-Kong libeler, and the 
case was tried before the chief justice, Sir George 
Phillippo, a wiser, firmer, kinder man than whom 
was never known. He protected the calumniator 
till he found it to be his duty to protect me, 
and then he did me full justice. The jury found 
Frazer Smith guilty, and the judge sentenced 
him to two months' imprisonment, and to pay 
costs (eleven hundred dollars). I am not fond 
of shining in courts of justice, but, on both these 
occasions, I could do no other than place myself 
in their hands, and await the verdict ; for I say 
with my great master, Shakespeare (who, by the 
way, had his little experience in the court at, 
I think, Stratford-on-Avon, before Sir Thomas 
Lucy) : — 

" Good name in man and woman, dear my lord. 

Is the immediate jewel of their souls : 

Who steals my purse, steals trash ; 't is something, nothing, 

'T was mine, *t is his, and has been slave to thousands ; 

But he that filches from me my good name 

Robs me of that which not enriches him. 

And makes me poor indeed ! " 

that previous to this trial lier ahandonnement had assumed the 
symptoms of a clironic disease; and, since 

" Infirmity doth still neglect all office, 
Wliereto our health is bound; we are not ourselves, 
When nature, being oppressed, commands the mind 
To suffer with the body," 
her appearance in court as jDrosecutor in this case must be classed with 
those many strange doings that preceded the catastrophe — the wellnigli 
final act in a personal tragedy of unspeakable sadness. — [ Ed. 



CHAPTEK XIV. — China. 

CANTON. 

" What, will you walk wHli me about the town ? " 

— Comedy of Errors, Act i, so. 2. 

The gin^ric-sha — The German Concordia Club— Herr Streich, the 
German consul — The European settlements — The old and the 
modern city — Two circuits of walls — The streets — "The blind 
leading the blind" — Persons too poor to be beggars — Lepers — 
Leper villages — Ivory-carving — Embroidery and painting on silk 
— The prison and its discipline — The mandarins : their exactions 
and robberies — A typical case — Capital punishment — The prisoners 
and the wardens — Performance in the hall of the Concordia Club — 
Edward H. House — Willy Winter — Horace Greeley — The late 
Charles Ileade — A t3^phoon — The life-saving brigade — Colonel 
Mosely, the American consul. 

My long stay in Hong-Kong, imposed on me 
by my sense of honor, was, in spite of the great 
hospitality and friendliness shown to me by the 
best people of the place, very hard to put up with. 
Hong-Kong has not many outlets : a walk up the 
Kennedy Road, a delightful stroll or two to the 
Peak, or into the country, and you have exhausted 
the resources of the town and its immediate 
neighborhood. Besides, one gets tired of being 
carried about all day in a gin-ric-sha, a sort of 
miniature gig, in which a coolie takes, one may 
say, the place of a pony in a narrow and light 
pair of shafts, and which was, a few years ago, 
introduced into China from Japan, where gin-ric- 
shas have long been in use as cabs, and where the 
coolies are said to be of such splendid physique 



CANTON. 217 

that you can travel by these Japanese man- 
carriages as many as seventy miles a day. 

Under these circumstances I was very glad 
to accept the invitation of the German Concordia 
Club, of Canton, to go up there with Miss Beaudet 
and give a dramatic reading in the hall of their 
clubhouse. Herr Streich, the German consul, 
generously invited us to his house, and we went 
up the river by the Pow Woo, a vessel built on 
the American river-steamer plan, to Canton, 
on June 23. The consul received us with the 
greatest hospitality and made a splendid host. 

The European settlement is close to the river 
and entirely apart from the old cit}'" of Canton, 
which is surrounded by a wall, or perhaps I ought 
more correctly to say, from the old and modern 
cities ; for here we confront the singular circum- 
stance of a walled city in the centre of another 
walled city, the fact being that the inner city 
was the original Canton, but that the suburbs 
beyond the walls attained to such dimensions 
that they far surpassed tlie size of the city itself, 
and the town was a mere speck at their heart, and 
another wall was constructed so as to compass 
them. But if the city continues to grow at the 
ratio it has during the last five years, they will 
soon require to build another wall, and Canton 
will be, in reality, three completely walled-in 
cities. 

The streets of the town are very narrow, from 
five to eight feet in average, I should say. No 



218 AX ACTOB'S TOUB. 

wheeled vehicle of any sort can get inside the 
city proper ; much less could it move were it 
once in, even by the most squeezing process. 
All travel is done on foot or in chairs, and when 
a chair is encountered everybody going in the 
opposite direction is compelled to step into the 
front of some shop (the fronts are all open, 
without windows, doors, or any partition), and 
wait until it has passed. In order to conceive 
accurately of the multitudinous life that animates 
these narrow streets, the reader has only to 
reflect that considerably over one million people 
are cooped up in an enclosure two miles square. 
Blockades are not very common in the streets, 
and yet I do not understand how they are 
prevented, for the streets always swarm with 
humanity. A funeral or a wedding procession 
takes up the entire highway, and a passing fire- 
department crowds everybody into the store- 
fronts. People must mind their own business on 
the streets in order to avoid collisions, and the 
narrowness of the pathway both tends to enforce 
the law of self-preservation on the passers-by and 
to prevent the concourse of mobs. 

One of the strangest sights witnessed in the 
streets is that of the " blind leading the blind." 
The blind are wont to form coalitions for their 
mutual benefit. They may be seen moving 
cautiously along in a procession. I have counted 
as many as eleven slowly and cautiously advanc- 
ing in company. Each person takes hold of the 



CANTON. . 219 

garment of the person in front of him with the 
left hand, and with tlie right keejis a bamboo 
pole moving about on the ground so as to 
prevent a misstep, which those in front of him 
may have avoided simply through good-fortune. 
In this way the pitable little band picks its way 
along the crowded streets, turning corners and 
ascending and descending steps with wonderful 
ease. The principal responsibility devolves upon 
the leader. 

Beggars are not near so common here as 
in Shanghai, where they infest the streets as 
rats do a wharf. Iji China, paradoxical as the 
statement may sound, a person may be too poor 
to be a beggar — that is, too poor to pay the 
initiation fee, which admits him to the beggars' 
union. In this case he simply lies around au}^- 
where, making himself as offensive as possible, 
and even inflicting torture upon himself, in 
order to wring pity from the lookers-on. One 
afternoon I passed by such a one. He was an 
old man, bared to the waist, and as I went by 
he knocked his head against the pavement, 
thereby producing an audible report which made 
me shudder, and surely, though his skull had 
been a vacuum before, it must then have gained 
at least one idea, that of Y>^\n. As he raised 
his head from the ground I noticed that long 
practice of this sort had produced a large arti- 
ficial bump on his scalp. 

" The J lire but beggars that can count their worth." 



220 . AN AGTOB'S TOUB. 

There are lepers here as at Sliaughai. Some 
of them are so horribly revolting to the eye that 
one feels weak in every joint as one's eye rests 
on them for an instant in passing by. They 
sit by the wayside to receive stray coppers of 
the value of a tenth of a cent, but their home 
is in a leper settlement three or four miles 
to the east. Every Chinese city has its leper 
villages near by, for leprosy is a serious scourge 
there. 

Ivory-carving, and embroidery and painting 
on silk, are very important occupations in 
Canton ; the workmanship in both departments 
being exquisite. I have stood for hours and 
watched the Cantonese carve their wonderful 
ideas into ivory, or paint and weave into silk 
the most chaste and artistic designs, and this 
often in dirty, muddy holes, scarcely fit for 
human beings to dwell or work in, but without 
as much as leaving . the smallest speck or stain 
upon their beautiful work. 'T is a marvel of 
artistic achievement to see the piece of ivory 
transformed beneath their touch into a com- 
plete miniature temple, including even the 
officiating priests and worshiping congregation, 
or castle evidently inhabited, or a fortress 
garrisoned with soldiers. 

In relation to the silk industries I must add 
that the designs are first drawn with white 
paint upon the material, after which the em- 
broiderer traces them in the loom. 



CANTON. 221 

I paid a visit to the celebrated prison of 
Canton, and was much interested in seeing the 
prisoners let out of the prison doors to follow 
their respective trades during certain hours; 
true, they were heavily chained, but still this 
custom struck me as a somewhat nearer approach 
to a conception of the real office of punishment 
as applied to criminals, than that cooping-up 
in idleness, or at unproductive labor, simply 
because they are more painful, which is so 
common in our Western prison discipline; for 
these Canton criminals are never for a moment 
in their prison experience allowed to forget that 
work is a duty to themselves and to their families 

— work which ought to be a joy. And work 
they must, even when in the prisoner's garb and 
fetters which their own misdoings have brought 
upon them. The prisoners may be seen about 
the city in their various shops or stores following 
their usual occupation during the hours of the 
day, yet with the convict-brand plainly upon 
them in those heavy chains, — a warning to all, 

— being by this mean':' able to support their 
families and costing the government nothing ; 
very likely, indeed, paying a yearly royalty to 
the mandarins for being allowed the privilege. 

The mandarins, in fact, govern the country, 
and the empress is ignorant of what goes on 
in her vast empire. She is only a mere figurehead 
of the government. The mandarins are the 
actual administrators. And the exactions and 



222 AN ACTOR'S TOUB. 

robberies to which they subject the multitudes 
beneath tliem are most infamous. Not one of the 
Chinese dare give out his actual wealth; he is 
always a " velly poor man," for fear of the man- 
darin coming to the conclusion, as he inevitably 
does when a man is found to be in good circum- 
stances, that he has too many riches; in which 
case the self-called " velly poor man " has to give 
up a good round sum, and if he does not do it 
readily and with a certain amount of grace, the 
mandarin soon finds easy ways of throwing him 
into prison, perhaps of bringing about his public 
execution, or of taking his life in some way or 
other, in short, of laying his bloody hands on the 
poor Celestial's entire estate. 

At the very time of my visit an exciting case 
of this type was decided in Canton, and cost, as 
is unfortunately too seldom the case, the man- 
darin his life no less than his victim, the agent 
he had employed to execute his diabolical pur- 
pose. The mandarin had arrested, tried, and 
beheaded a man for the murder of another, by 
whose death he had greatly enriched himself. 
The man, it turned out, had only been the 
mandarin's agent in the murder, but hoping to 
cover up his own crime under a cloak of feigned 
indignation and justice, he unblushingly threw 
him into prison, and then consigned him to the 
block. The case was a most intricate one, but 
somehow the truth oozed out, and the attention 
of the supreme government was called to it by 



CANTON. 223 

the German consulate, and for once the matter 
was thoroughly sifted, the guilt of the man- 
darin revealed, and the full penalty of the law 
enforced. He was beheaded. 

"Change places, and handy-dandy, which is the justice? 
Which is the thief?" 

Capital punishment in China is very simple. 
The culprit kneels with his hands on the 
ground, and the executioner, with one stroke of 
a two-edged, sharp sword severs the head from 
the body. There were forty executions in this 
way in the Canton prison on the day before 
I visited the city. A life is not worth much 
in China, and the punishments for certain crimes 
are too horrible to mention. 

The Chinese take all this most stoically ; they 
do not bother their minds over the hereafter. 
They believe, if anything, that they go into 
complete bliss when they die, and so take death 
much easier than life. And well they may, for 
the life of the ordinary Chinese is a hard one. 

The Canton prison is a dingy, filthy, low- 
roofed, stone building of antique structure, with 
numerous outhouses ; and the prisoners, who were 
huddled together, standing and smoking in the 
respective yards, evinced the greatest indifference 
to everything but the money they asked of the 
visitors for having been allowed to look at them. 
One fellow told me, with a broad grin on his 
face, that he was going to be executed on the next 



224 AN ACTOB'8 TOUIi. 

day for piracy, and begged money for, as I gathered 
from his words, "a wee little spree." But the 
ugly crowd of closely confined prisoners (for not 
all of them are allowed to leave the precincts 
of the gaol) were not the only ones who 
besieged us for money; the officials in charge 
were just as eager as the prisoners themselves. 
We were glad to get away from the dreadful 
wretches, and to feel ourselves once more at ease 
and in safety beneath the hospitable roof of our 
friend, the German consul. 

We gave our dramatic recitations, several 
scenes from Shakespeare, and performed The 
Happy Pair, in the handsome hall of the Con- 
cordia Club, on the evening of the same day, 
and left the next morning, with the best wishes 
of our numerous Canton friends, by the same 
river steamer, Pow Woo, for Hong-Kong. On 
arrival there I found the following letter from 
my friend, Edward H. House : — 

"ToKio, Japan, May 29, 1882. 
" Ml/ dear Bandmann, — I am surprised and 
delighted to find you are so near, and wish I could 
hope you might come even nearer ; but of that 
I fear there are grave doubts. All I can hear 
of your intentions indicates that you will go back 
to Europe by way of India, and not by way of 
America. If your plans would allow you to 
visit Japan, I should have a rare pleasure in 
greeting you again. You are doubtless aware 



CANTON. 



that no promising pecuniary prospect is ever 
open, in this country, to a man of your position. 
The English-speaking community is small, very 
small, and although you could be sure of one 
(possibly two) good audiences, you could not 
expect anything like a fair reward for the 
trouble and expense of coming here expressly. 
That is the reason why I apprehend you will 
not come. 

" It seems a dreadful pity that 3'ou should be so 
close, and that I should not be able to shake 
hands with you. I do wish that my news of you 
were incorrect, and that your route would be via 
Japan. You would be here at a fine season of the 
year, and you could not fail to enjoy the beauty 
of the scener}^ and the pleasant ways of the 
people. I am rather an invalid myself, but I 
would do everything in my power to make your 
visit an agreeable one. I was very sorry to miss 
you when I was in England last year, and to see 
you here would be an excellent compensation. 
I do not suppose I ought to expect it, but if you 
do come it will be a high gratification to me. 
" Yours very sincerely, 

" E. H. House." 

Notwithstanding this letter, however, I could 
not make Japan fit in with my plans, and I had to 
forego the pleasure of meeting my brilliant friend, 
whose removal to that country has been so deeply 
and widely felt in New York journalism no less 



226 AN ACTOii'S TOUB. 

than in the society of that city. Edward House 
is, without exception, the most thorough and 
refined critic the American daily press has ever 
produced; in heavier journalism he, perliaps, has 
equals, but certainly not many superiors. Willy 
Winter, who followed him as dramatic critic 
on the Tribune^ does things " nicely " enough, 
but we miss the masterly touches and penetra- 
tive insight of Edward House, and certain it 
is that, had the latter followed the entreaties 
and advice of the late Horace Greeley, he never 
would have relinquished his position. A man 
is known by his friends, and few living jour- 
nalists have more true and noble spirits among 
their friends than Edward House ; his intellect 
is so vigorous and keen, his tastes so refined, 
and his sympathies so wide for whatever is great 
or beautiful, that he is sure to win the respect 
and regard of all with whom he comes in contact. 
The late Charles Reade was one of his warmest 
admirers, and though nothing that I might write 
could equal the beauty of the eulogy I have 
heard from his lips, I feel a joy in saying that 
I share the sentiments of esteem and respect no 
less deeply and affectionately than dear Charles 
Reade himself did for Edward H. House. 

On the seventh of July we were invited out 
to dinner, but with difficulty reached our desti- 
nation in consequence of a slight typhoon. It 
had been expected the whole day, and about 
half-past seven o'clock it came on, as I thought. 



CANTON. 227 

with great violence, but the Hong-Kongese 
called it a very slight one. Well, to me it 
was terrible enough, and I should not like to 
have experienced one similar to that which 
occurred a few years ago, in which ten thousand 
lives were lost and several three-masted ships 
were tossed from the sea-coast half a mile into 
the town. 

No human mind can conceive the terribleness 
of a typhoon that has had no experience of it ; 
but a very slight one, I assure you, is sufficient. 
A picture may be drawn of its awful force when 
it is known that five thousand horse-power 
steamers may steam with their noses right 
against a typhoon and use all their might, and 
yet as a rule they are drifted back in a very 
few minutes from two to four miles. 

When a typhoon comes on, all the sandbank 
men, who live on the water by thousands, dis- 
appear the moment notice is given of its 
approach, which fortunately is generally known 
twelve hours ahead from nautical observations ; 
and warning is given by the loud striking of 
a large bell in a lofty tower and the ringing 
of many smaller ones through the streets ; ere 
their sounds have died away the door of every 
house is closed and bolted, every loophole is 
bunged up, and the greatest precautions are 
taken to keep the wind out ; and yet the houses 
shake as if an earthquake were rattling them. 
At such a time the life-saving brigade, one of 



228 A:i ACTOB'>S TOUIL 

the most humane iiistitutions, and principally 
organized by young Europeans, is on the qui 
vive^ with its life-saving apparatus. I asked one 
of these 3^oung gentlemen, after it was all over 
(a typhoon never lasts more than forty minutes 
and only about ten terrifically), whether it had 
been a bad one. 

" No, sir," said he ; ." only about sixteen lives 
lost." 

"Good heaven!" I exclaimed. "Sixteen lives 
lost ? " 

" Why, that 's nothing," he replied. " In the 
last, several thousands perished ; this was only 
a little puff." 

" Thank you," I thought ; " it was enough for 
me ; I don't want to see a worse. If this, indeed, 
was a puff, what must a full blast be ? " 

One of my most pleasant acquaintances in 
Hong-Kong was Colonel Mosely, the American 
consul, who is much liked for his dry humor and 
straightforward and dehonnaire bearing toward 
all. I met him in society on several occasions, 
and had many a good laugh Avith him. He is 
still as hearty as ever, and a foreign climate has 
not aged him in the least. 

I was much feted during my stay, and received 
the honorary membership of the German Club, 
which has by far the most elegant of the several 
clubhouses of that town. Hong-Kong, however, 
when compared with Shanghai, stands at a great 
disadvantage on account of its rough element. 



CANTON. 229 

It has a vast mixed population, a portion of it 
very low and ignorant, especially the Portuguese ; 
and the education of even the Chinese of the 
place is not equal to that of the natives of 
Shanghai, which as a metropolitan city takes 
the lead. 

About the middle of July, I received a most 
pressing invitation to visit Manila, in the Philip- 
pine Islands, and I was assured that I and my 
company would meet with most generous support. 
This, however, I respectfully declined, owing to 
the sad news that had reached me of the death 
of an entire opera company from cholera, in that 
town, and having no wish to place myself and 
others in risk of that terrible disease. So, on the 
twentieth of July, I left Hong-Kong, accompanied 
by Miss Beaudet and other members of my com- 
pany, by the Peninsular and Oriental steamer 
Sharon, for Singapore. 



CHAPTER XV.— Malay Peninsula. 

SINGAPORE. 

" Why, sir, what 'cerns it you if I wear pearl and gold? I thank 
my good father, I am able to maintain it." 

— Taming of the Shrew, Act v, so. 1. 
" For the apparel oft proclaims the man." 

— Hamlet, Act i, sc. 3. 
"Cloth of gold, and cuts, and laced with silver; set with pearls." 
— Much Ado About Nothing, Act Hi, sc. 4. 
"All o'er embelUshed witli rubies, carbuncles, sapphires." 

— Comedy of Errors, Act Hi, sc. 2. 
"Behold! I have a weapon; 
A better never did itself maintain 
Upon a soldier's thigh." 

— Othello, Act V, sc. 2. 
" I will wink and hold out mine iron : it is a simple one ; but what 
though? It will toast cheese, and it wiU endure cold as another 
man's sword wiU." 

— nenry V, Act ii, sc. 1. 
"But since all is well, keep it so: 
Wake not a sleeping wolf." 

— Henry IV (second part), Act i, sc. 2. 
" Immortal gods, I crave no pelf; 
I pray for no man but myself." 

— Timon of Athens, Act i, sc. 2. 

The centre of the East— The climate — The great commercial impor- 
tance of the place — Its magnificent geographical position — Its 
produce — The residences and clubhouses of the Europeans — The 
Germans in Singapore — The Governor, His Excellency Sir F. A. 
Weld, and Lady Weld — The theatre — The Sultan of Sooloo — His 
eight wives — His dress and his jewels — A black pearl with the 
charm of immortality — His great-grandfather — His sword-bearer 
— The ancesti-al sword — The sultan a cheap guest — A monkey- 
himt — The sultan and his eight wives at the theatre — The German 
Teutonia Club — A complimentary ball — A testimonial. 

We arrived at Singapore after a lovely voyage 
of five days, and were well received by the 



SINGAPORE. 231 



people. The town lies at the extreme south of 
the Malay Peninsula directly under the equator, 
and the folk get no particular season there, 
as the climate, within a degree or so, is always 
the same, only that, during the months of July, 
August, and September, the atmosphere is cooler, 
on account of frequent rains, and consequently 
the gayeties are then agog and the amusements 
better attended. 

Singapore is the centre of the East. Every 
ship that goes to China from all quarters of the 
globe, excepting California, touches at this point, 
and the entire traffic for Siam, Java, and northern 
Australia, goes this way, to take in supplies of 
coal and water, and for purposes of commerce, 
much freight being shipped there. Ships call 
for their instructions, and steer afterward for 
any harbor the advice bids them. 

Singapore lies in a magnificent bay, with two 
grand openings leading into the Malacca Straits, 
and having landing-piers for miles on miles. It 
is also the most cosmopolitan town in the entire 
East, with the exception, perhaps, of Calcutta, 
by reason of its advantageous position. The 
produce of the place includes sago, farina, rice, 
pepper, indigo, and a large variety of spices, and 
they are now trying tea and coffee, but with little 
success so far. 

The town itself is very large and flat, with 
lovely outskirts, and beautiful in appearance. 
The Botanical Gardens and the waterworks. 



232 AN ACTORS TOUB. 

which are situated several miles from the centre 
of the town, are of wondrous beauty, rivaling 
scenes of fairyland. The Europeans live out of 
the town from three to six miles, and even 
their clubhouses are miles away in the suburbs. 
The result of this is that most of their houses 
are surrounded with delightful grounds, gardens, 
and parks, and as there is generally a breeze 
in the evening from one quarter or another, 
they get more benefit from it than they would 
in the closer quarters of the city. Then, too, 
they usually select an elevated site for tlieir 
residence, and the houses are built in a light 
and airy Eastern style, with large verandas and 
windov/s. 

Everybody has a home in Singapore, and 
lodging and boarding houses are wellnigh 
unheard-of institutions, for even tlie young men 
club together in groups of four or six, and hire 
a bungalow and set up housekeeping for them- 
selves, and are happier and more comfortable 
than they could be in the hotels, which as a rule 
in the East are very bad. 

The European population in Singapore is one 
of the best, if not the best, to be found in 
Eastern cities. As in Shanghai, so here, there 
are no second and third classes amongst them ; 
every European one meets has the stamp of a 
gentleman upon him. The same superiority 
characterizes the ladies, only they are somewhat 
too exclusive. 



SINGAPOBE. 233 



The Germans take a very prominent part in 
Singapore affairs, and with right ; for the nation 
is represented here by an excellent body of people, 
generous, intelligent, and genial. We received the 
greatest encouragement from them and the other 
Europeans, and I cannot sufficiently express my 
gratitude to a number of gentlemen amateurs for 
the generous and ready assistance they gave me 
in some of my performances. It is needful to 
say here that I had been obliged to make some 
changes in my company, and, awaiting a new 
group my wife had undertaken to organize and 
send out from London, I spent nearly six weeks 
in Singapore playing Hamlet, The Merchant of 
Venice, Macbeth, David Garrick, and other 
pieces, with capital amateur support which fre- 
quently reached a j)erfection seldom attained by 
many self-called professionals, and doing an enor- 
mous business. 

The Governor, His Excellency Sir F. A. Weld, 
K.C.M.G., and Lady Weld were very kind to us, 
and frequently visited the theatre, which is 
combined with the Town Hall, and perhaps the 
most comfortable for the audience in the East. 
Pankhas were pulled the entire evening, and 
while the actors on the stage have to "sweat," 
the audience sit under a delightful breeze enjoy- 
ing the performance. 

At Singapore I met the Sultan of Sooloo, who 
came down from his vast dominion, which com- 
prises the many islands of the Sooloo archipelago, 



234 ANACTOB'S TOUB. 

accompanied by his harem, his sword-bearer, and 
his interpreter, and sojourned some days here on 
his way to Mecca. The sultan is a little fellow, 
clean shaven (I suppose he was in the habit of 
going through that ceremony himself, as I saw no 
court barber in his retinue : but perhaps one of 
the imperial mistresses discharged this office, or 
may be they each took a turn at it), and looked 
about nineteen, though, in fact, he was already 
twenty-six: at least, so he told me in conversation 
later. But in the East, the veracity of the 
natives is never to be relied on, not even in so 
personal a matter as their age, which, certainly, 
they ought to know better than others. 

The sultan was tolerably well-off in the 
matter of wives, for, young as he was, he had 
already eight, — four of whom he had, with Ori- 
ental generousness, taken over from the harem of 
his predecessor, and each of them old enough 
to have been his mother; the other four were 
his own choice, although I could not congratulate 
him with any degree of candor upon that score, 
for certainly I never saw four other women so 
plain and with so few personal attractions as 
these. Perhaps he has no eye for beauty, or 
may be his standard in tliis respect differs 
from my own, and these women may have 
seemed perfectly charming in his eyes ; or perhaps 
he went in for plainness from principle as proof 
against jealousy, which if so terrible to endure, it 
seems, when roused by one woman, how much 



SINOAPOBE. 235 



more so if roused by eight ! Be that, however, 
as it may, it seemed to me a mystery how this 
young man, and he a sultan, could have taken 
all these to himself, when any one of them, I can 
truly and without hesitation say, would have 
been deemed too many for almost any other man 
I have known. 

The sultan wore a light coat and a pair of 
green silk trousers (a great preference, I have 
observed, with the nobility of the East), a turban, 
and carried a light Malacca cane. The buttons 
and decorations of his turban and coat were the 
most astonishing pearls and huge rubies I have 
ever seen. Some of the pearls were as large as 
walnuts, and some of the rubies would have 
taken a Gould's or a Vanderbilt's breath away. 
On his forefinger he wore a black pearl, wliich 
he told me had the charm of immortality. It had 
descended to him from his great-grandfather, who 
lived for over two hundred years. I suppose he 
attained a great age, and the years in the East, 
with indolent life, are long, even as counted by 
one hundred days to a year; but I am a little 
dubious of the sultan's veracity if we reckon 
the year in any other way. Well, at last, he told 
me, this ancestor of his, being utterly sick of 
earthly life, prayed to Mohammed to intercede 
for him with Allah — adding, with great rever- 
ence that I shall never forget, " There is no God 
but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet" — to 
release him from his bondage, which Allah at 



236 AX ACTOR' 8 TOUR. 

once did, and lie ascended to paradise, where he 
lives amid palm groves and lovely fountains, and 
enrapturing dark-eyed houris. All this he told 
me with great seriousness, and then calling to his 
sword-bearer he directed the conversation to a 
very different subject, producing the "sabre de 
son p^re," a most formidable weapon, which had 
descended from the same immortal great-grand- 
father, and had done duty of execution to thou- 
sands of heads. It must certainly have been 
a terror in his empire, and I have never seen 
a more terrible and cruel weapon. It was of the 
shape of a very wide sword-bayonet, not quite so 
j)ointed nor so long, but very wide in the blade, 
double-edged at the end, and very thick. The 
weight of it was enormous, and must sometimes 
have tired the sword-bearer whose duty it was to 
carry it wherever his imperial master went ; and 
I think it was only necessary to drop it gently on 
a neck, and it would do the rest of the execution 
itself. Besides, its edges were besmeared with 
a most deadly poison which would kill a being, 
had he the strength of a Hercules : — 

"So mortal, that but dip a knife in it, 
Where it draws blood, no cataplasm so rare, 
Collected from all simples that have virtue 
Under the moon, can save the thing from death 
That is but scratch'd withal." 

I took the weapon in my hands (there was no 
managing it with one hand), and from that 



SINGAPORE. 237 



moment made up my mind that, at all cost, I 
would keep good friends with the sultan, and 
immediately invited him to dine Avith me. He 
graciously accepted my invitation, and came the 
next day ; and, O terrors unspeakable ! his 
sword-bearer, with the immortal great - grand- 
father's weapon along with him, who stationed 
himself behind the sultan's chair, with one eye 
on his master and the other, a most terrible eye, 
on me. My situation seemed far from comfort- 
able, but my ease was still more disturbed when 
I found that, although I had prepared a sumptu- 
ous meal for my royal guest, he would n't take 
a morsel of anything, save a biscuit and soda- 
water. The sultan was the cheapest guest I 
ever had. It was a solitary dinner, although two 
persons were, in some sort, enjoying it, and a 
third party standing with the great ancestral 
weapon of the sultan so near ! I tried to eat, 
but it was wellnigh in vain for terror of thinking 
of that awful, poisoned instrument of execution 
and of torture, that, at the least wink of the eye 
or nod of the head of my imperial guest, might 
be drawn from its hiding-j)lace and make an end 
of all things "weary and joyful." However, 
the affair passed off without blood being shed, and 
the sultan even proposed that I should accom- 
pany him, on the following day, to a monkey- 
hunt. I cheerfully accepted the invitation, and 
lie called for me the next morning at the 
appointed hour in a tremendous, huge carriage 



238 AN ACTOR'S TOUB. 

that, I believe, had also belonged to his sainted 
great-grandfather. They must have been giants 
in those days, for everything was on such an 
extensive scale. We took several guns with us, 
and drove out into the country about ten miles. 
We only shot two miserable little things, not 
worth having, but the sport was well worth the 
trouble. I saw at least twenty monkeys of various 
sizes, but the big fellows were too shrewd for us, 
and kept well out of the reach of harm. In the 
evening, the sultan, accompanied by his eight 
wives, honored the theatre with his presence, and, 
although a screen with lace curtains was set aside 
for these ladies, they could easily be seen, and the 
sultan did n't seem to care a fig whether any one 
looked or not ; he was evidently more interested 
just then in the fate of Romeo and Juliet than in 
that of his wives. 

Besides the performances at the theatre, we 
gave an entertainment at the German Teutonia 
Club, where we played one act of Hamlet in 
German, and The Happy Pair in English, and 
I recited Schiller's " Lay of the Bell." We were 
most hospitably treated, and the ball afterward, 
given in honor of our presence was a grand affair. 
The next day I received from my German friends 
the following letter (I give the English transla- 
tion) : — 

" Teutonia Club, Singapore, August 7, 1882. 

^'•Honored Sir^ — In the name of the members 
of the Teutonia Club, we beg to express to you 



SINQAPOBE. 239 



and to Miss Beaudet our sincerest thanks for the 
delightful evening you have given us, and request 
you both to accept the enclosure as a mark of our 
esteem. 

" J. Fkiedrich, Hon. Sec." 

The enclosure was a very liberal testimony in 
money. 

After a number of banquets, f^tes, and other 
distinctions, we reluctantly left our Singapore 
friends on the twenty-fourth of August, in order 
to catch the pleasant weather which the Western 
monsoon gives to Ceylon. 



CHAPTER XVI. — India. 

CEYLON. 

" Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." 

— Henry IV (second part). Act Hi, sc. 1. 
"Kings are earth's gods; in vice their law 's their will; 
And if Jove stray, who dare say that Jove doth ill ? " 

— Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Act i, sc. 1. 
" Not all the water in the rough, rude sea 
Can wash the balm from an anointed king." 

— Richard II, Act Hi, sc. 2. 
" The hearts of princes kiss obedience, 
So much they love it; but to stubborn spirits, 
They swell, and grow as terrible as storms." 

— Henry VIII, Act Hi, sc. 1. 

Colombo — The best season of the year— The Western monsoon— The 
coflee-planters and the coflee-worm — The enterprise of the settlers 

— The fine roads — Ruin from the coffee-Morm — The Singalese — 
The coolies — A coolie's feat of strength — The best hotels in the 
East— Mr. Beresford Hope— The Governor, Sir J. R. Longden, 
and Lady Longden — The commanding-general — Performances in 
the schoolroom of the barracks — A great success — Gentlemen 
amateurs — The soldiers of the gaiTison — The band — Singalese 
Catholics — Moslem jewelers — Brummagem jcAvels — Kandy, the 
capital — The Government House grounds— Lady Horton's prome- 
nade — The lake and the walk around it — The legend of the lake 

— The royal mausoleum — The Great Temple — The fate of a 
king's wives in olden time— Newara Ellya, the summer resort — 
A scene of fashion and amusement — English residents — Cin- 
chona—Don Pedro — Elephants — A "rogue" — Mr. Saunders — A 
Colombo benefit. 

I REACHED Colombo, passing by Penang, a 
dreadful, mean, and dirty place, on the first of 
September. Any one intending to visit Ceylon 
and this most charming city, should try to arrange 
to be there some time between June 1 and Octo- 
ber 31, the most delightful season of the year. 



CEYLON. 241 

During that period the Western monsoon, which 
eats into steel and iron, and ruins every article 
of clothing if not hung out in the sun at least an 
hour every day, is most soothing in its effect upon 
the lungs, beneficial to all sufferers from heart- 
disease, and dowered with blessings of health and 
life for all. 

From tlie opening of June to the end of Octo- 
ber Colombo is in its gayest mood, and there is 
a constant round of amusements and festivities. 
The governor of Ceylon comes down from 
Nawara Ellya and Kandy, and the programme 
of pleasure, during these months, includes num- 
berless races, balls, dinners, concerts, and theatri- 
cal performances ; and all Ceylon wears robes 
of gladness and rejoicing. That is, all those who 
have not been ruined by the coffee-worm, a disease 
which has made much havoc among the richest 
and best settlers. Ceylon was, for a long time, 
the best coffee-producing country in the world; 
the coffee raised there was of the highest value 
in the market and most in request. The pros- 
perity of the island was boundless, and the 
excellent settlers showed their gratitude by a 
push and an enterprise nowhere surpassed in the 
British colonies; roads, piers, breakwaters, were 
constructed with an unrivaled rapidity and 
grandeur. Any one who travels on the railroad, 
at an elevation of two thousand feet, from 
Colombo to Kandy, or the beautiful mountain- 
road from Kandy to Newara Ellya at a height of 



242 AN AOTOB'S TOUB. 

three thousand feet, will see what perseverance 
and enterprise have characterized the settlers in 
Ceylon. But the prosperity of the best colonists 
that ever opened a country was not to last long ; 
a terrible disease set in, and out of every one 
hundred planters sixty were ruined. From year to 
year it grew worse, till bankruptcy stared in the 
face those who were, five years previous, living 
in comfort and luxury, and they found they 
had n't a rupee to their names. Some, however, 
were wise in time, and changed their tactics; 
giving up the culture of coffee, they went in for 
cinchona (the bark of a tree from which quinine 
is extracted, said to be so named from the 
Countess del Cinchon, but more probably derived 
from hinahina, the native word for bark), and 
came out right. But those who still looked for 
a release from the disease and continued coffee- 
planting were only destined to have further disap- 
pointment and deeper ruin. Hundreds of miles 
of coffee-land, which was once worth millions 
of dollars, had finally to be abandoned. 

" But with fate's almighty powers 
No eternal bond is safe 
And misfortune swiftly rides." 

" This is the state of man : To-day he puts forth 
The tender leaves of hope, to-morrow blossoms, 
And bears his blushing honors thick upon him; 
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost; 
And — when he thinks, good easy man, full surely 
His greatness is a ripening — nips his root, 
And then he falls." 



CEYLON. 24;5 

Yet there is plenty of wealth in the island 
still, arising from the produce of cinchona, rice, 
and tea. In Colombo, which is the town where 
the principal commerce of the island is carried 
on and where the government officials reside, 
there is but little want to be seen. The Singalese 
strike one at once as an interesting race, the men 
with long hair and combs on their heads, while 
the women wear no adornments of the kind. 
They are the best-made men of Eastern nations, 
and the most intelligent, chiefly fitted, however, 
for indoor work, and certainly not overhonest 
in their dealings, as our experience at Galle 
proved to us so convincingly. 

The coolies, who emigrate by thousands to all 
parts of the East, are the workers in the field 
and at all heavy labors. A coolie will do what 
no navvy or American negro is able to accom- 
plish; he will take one hundred pounds weight of 
freight on his head and walk, in one day, from 
fifty to sixty miles over mountains and dales with 
it for the moderate sum of four or five rupees. 
It is true, after he has accomplished such a feat, 
he generally sleeps a week — his highest enjoy- 
ment on earth. 

Colombo possesses the best hotels in the East. 
The Oriental and the Mount Lavinia, a sea-side 
place about six miles out of town, are equal to 
any European establishment in beauty of situa- 
tion, comfort, and elegance. The prices are 
moderate, from four to six rupees a day, and 
the cuisine excellent. 



244 AN ACTOR'S TO Uli. 

The first gentleman I met in Colombo was mj 
old friend, Mr. Beresford Hope (a distant rela- 
tion of the well-known Conservative member of 
the House of Commons bearing the same name), 
who was, at the time, acting as private secretary 
to the governor, Sir J. R. Longden. He intro- 
duced me to both His Excellency and Lady 
Longden, and made my stay in many other ways 
very pleasant. But it was not to Mr. Hope alone 
that we were indebted, for every one we met con- 
tributed to our enjoyment. What I have said 
of Shanghai and Singapore is, in a great measure, 
true of Colombo. The colonists there are of 
a higher order, and far superior to those of 
Calcutta or Bombay. 

There is no theatre in Colombo and no large 
public hall appropriate for theatrical perform- 
ances, so the commanding -general placed at 
my disposal the schoolroom of the barracks, 
which has a good stage and some scenery and 
is capable of holding six hundred people. 

The Governor and Lady Longden were present 
at every performance. The band was given 
gratis, sixty performers, if I could have used 
them, and my first night's play netted over 
eleven hundred rupees. The second equaled 
the first, and the other four brought me about 
three thousand rupees more. I took, in six per- 
formances, during two weeks and a half, upward 
of five thousand rupees (twenty-five hundred 
dollars), with hardly two hundred and fifty 
dollars' expenses. 



CEYLON. 245 

In Colombo, also, I was well supported by 
gentlemen amateurs, and on one occasion, of 
which I shallhave more to say, a Singalese lady 
took the part of Emilia in Othello, which she 
did remarkably well. My supers, carpenters, 
stage-hands, check-takers, ushers, and the entire 
orchestra, were all soldiers of the garrison. 

Imagine a band of sixty instruments blowing 
away in a little hall capable of holding about six 
hundred people. There was a perfect storm of 
sound, and on the first night it jarred so upon the 
nerves of Lady Longden and other ladies in the 
audience, that afterward I reduced it to fifteen ; 
but so zealous were the sixty musicians — and 
grand military musicians they were, a really splen- 
did body of men — to show their sympathy with 
me, and each so wishful of doing his part, that no 
other method could be devised save the casting 
of lots to see which should constitute the for- 
tunate fifteen. Of course, this was managed by 
an arrangement agreed upon amongst themselves, 
so as to avoid the election of too many instru- 
mentalists of one order, and when the result 
was reached to leave a perfect band of fifteen 
performers. No incident in my life has ever 
impressed me more than the glad willingness 
with which these young military men did every- 
thing in their power to help me to make my 
performances in Colombo a grand success. 

The schoolroom stage on which we played had 
only one set of scenery, and it was so low that 



246 AN ACTOB'S TOUB. 

when I stood up perfectly straight my head 
touched the fly-boards. We played three acts 
of Hamlet all in this one scene, which was rather 
inconvenient. One of my actors, who played 
the King, got so " mixed up " that he said : — 

"My thoughts fly up, my words remain below, 
Thoughts without words never to heaven go." 

One thing surprised me greatly at Ceylon, 
namely, that there are at least a quarter of a 
million amongst the Singalese who have embraced 
the Catholic religion, and who have their manuals 
of devotion and prayer-books, and, I believe, the 
Bible, or, at least, portions of the Bible, trans- 
lated into their own language, and who observe 
all the Catholic rites in a semi-European fashion. 

But to turn to another subject : for, as it is hard 
to forget old grievances, I vow eternal hatred to 
all swindlers : I cannot refrain from referring 
again to the Singalese-Moslem jewelers, who are 
the greatest knaves, in their own particular line, 
in the entire world. They try to sell you a 
sapphire, or any other " precious stone," as they 
call it, " as precious," they will assure you, " as 
those of the walls of heaven themselves," for 
the exceeding small sum, for such rare jewels, 
of five hundred dollars, and, in the end, perhaps 
come down to twenty-five, which clearly proves 
them to be about as precious as those of the 
walls of hell, if, indeed, the world of the lost 
has any walls, for it were difficult, according 



CEYLON. 247 

to orthodox notions of a "bottomless pit," to 
understand how any foundations could ever 
have been laid for their support ; yet most 
assuredly to some such place, with walls or 
without walls, such rogues ought to go, and a 
year or two in the Ceylon prisons might not do 
them any harm. They mean no great wrong, it 
is said ; they only take in the ignorant, who 
have more money than brain. The calm and 
close observer who understands stones, or any 
one who acts as if he does, they treat honestly. 
I myself have seen the sharpers outwitted by 
a thoroughly acute dealer in stones, and I have 
also seen them sell, to a rich Australian squatter 
for three, six, or eight hundred dollars, a Brum- 
magem jewel, nothing more nor less than a bit 
of colored glass. 

I made a trip to Kandy, the capital of Ceylon, 
a charming spot, located over three thousand 
feet above the level of the sea, and yet in a 
beautiful valley surrounded by still higher mount- 
ain scenery. The governor has a fine residence 
there, where he lives three months in the year. 
In the Government House grounds there is a 
most beautiful walk called " Lady Horton's Prom- 
enade," because it was laid out by that lady during 
her husband's term of office as governor of Ceylon. 
The promenade is three and a half miles long, 
and winds in the most picturesque and scenic 
manner around the high mountain which shelters 
the grounds of the house. 



248 AK ACTOB'S TOUE. 

There is another lovely walk or drive around 
the lake, which is the principal sight of Kandy. 
It has a history: at least a legend of great 
beauty has grown around it, and all legends con- 
tain something of historic truth. It is said that 
one of the old kings of Ceylon, finding that 
idleness was the root of all evil, and that his feudal 
chiefs were prone, in consequence of that failing, 
to give him much trouble, hit upon the novel 
plan, for that ancient age, of giving them all some 
occupation. They were summoned to his royal 
presence in the capital, and came, many of them, 
in great state with their retinues and retainers. 
The king received them with unusual splendor, and 
made known the scheme that had matured itself 
in his thought, which was to make a large excava- 
tion, for the purpose of a lake, in the royal city 
of Kandy. They were delighted with the idea, 
and bent their energies to carrying it out. When 
the work was completed he ordered them to make 
a small island in the centre, on which he. purposed 
to raise a royal mausoleum for himself and his 
descendants, and these schemes were likewise 
carried out, and there was the longest term of 
peace ever known in the ancient kingdom of 
Ceylon. The legend is one of rare beauty, and 
contains a suggestive moral for legislatures of 
to-day and every age ; possibly rightly organized 
work for the masses would cure half the disaffec- 
tions of modern European society; at least, we 
know that in America and Australia, where work 



CETLOX. J 10 

is more abundant, and fair wages and high re- 
wards are held out as inducements to industry, 
perseverance, and integrity, the spirit of revolt 
and its attendant evils do not exist to any 
great extent. 

But the king was not buried in the mausoleum 
on the island of the lake ; in spite of his wishes 
his mortal remains were deposited opposite the 
Great Temple at Kandy, the largest in all India. 
During his life, however, he utilized the island 
for quite other than his original purpose. He 
was clearly a man of ideas, and, like most such 
men, sometimes altered his plans, or rather, 
perhaps, added plan to plan, as in this instance. 
It is said that the king made the island advan- 
tageous to himself as a sort of convict settlement, 
and not infrequently as a scene of execution 
for his refractory wives. Whenever one of his 
beloved better halves (or were they harpies? 
he had two hundred of them) became rebellious 
she was rowed over to that insular spot and no 
more was heard of her. Bones of human beings 
are constantly being dug up, especially of the 
feminine class. The king appears to have been 
altogether a very expert administrator, a veritable 
Blue -beard in Ceylon history; but, like King 
Hal of England, in a later age, who resembled 
him in being, in many ways, a good sovereign 
to the people and their leaders under him, he 
manifested a decided disposition to save law and 
lawyer's fees for divorce on more than one 



250 AN AC TOM'S TOUR. 

occasion. I wonder if, like King Hal, he had 
any qualms of conscience about his first case, and 
got it somehow made easy by the priesthood 
and doctors of his religion, and, by-and-by, found 
what was so hard to commence very convenient 
and agreeable by constant practice of their 
doctrine. Man is a strange being, full of con- 
tradictions, and when one considers the origin of 
the lake at Kandy, so far as legendary history 
records it, being in a desire of the king for 
peace, and that he might still the warring 
passions of his people, and then the brutal use 
to which the island in its centre was put, 
motives are revealed that seem absolutely incom- 
patible in one and the same character, did we 
not know that such is the strange composition 
of human nature that the most antithetical pas- 
sions exist side by side. 

Quite lately I read of an ancient temple in 
Mexico in which were discovered the skulls of 
hundreds of thousands of human beings, and it 
turns out that the priests were in the habit of 
ripping open persons who came to render them- 
selves a living sacrifice to their deity, and of 
cutting out the heart, which was offered on the 
altar with special devotions, and whole hecatombs 
of these victims thus died at the hands of the 
priests, who, strange to say, devoted themselves, 
in another part of the same temple, to the offices 
of mercy, such as tending lovingly the sick, the 
afflicted in mind, the homeless, the helpless, and 
the needy. 



CEYLON. 251 

The summer-resort of Ceylon, that is, during 
the time of the Northern monsoon, from the 
beginning of November to the end of May, is 
Newara Ellya, a beautiful valley amid encircling 
mountains, at an elevation of between four and 
five thousand feet above the level of the sea. 
It is reached partly by railroad, which takes the 
traveler within thirty miles of the place, and 
partly by coach. The coach-road is through 
most charming scenery, the whole route being 
highly picturesque, and the road itself of splendid 
construction and kept in perfect order. The 
valley is about four miles long and wellnigh the 
same in breadth. In the centre of it is a lake 
seven miles in circumference ; the walk around 
it is most lovely and quite unsurpassed by the 
lake scenery of any country. All the year round 
there are European visitors at Newara Ellya, and 
during the summer season the governor and the 
elite of the people of Ceylon flock to the 
place and it becomes the scene of every fashion, 
amusement, and display. 

Many English gentlemen, amongst whom a 
brother of Sir Samuel Baker and a Mr. Saunders, 
have fine estates at Newara Ellya, and regret to 
leave the enchanting spot, even in winter-time. 

Cinchona flourishes well here because the place 
is so sheltered by the mountains, amongst which 
is the Don Pedro, eiglit thousand feet above the 
level of the sea, the highest mountain in Ceylon. 
I made the ascent of it in less than three 



252 AN AarOB'S TOUB. 

hours, and beheld many a scene of beauty from 
its sides and summit. 

On my way through the jungle I saw a chitah 
and also a " rogue ; " a " rogue " is an elephant 
driven out of the herd for bad behavior. Ele- 
phants are gregarious, and for one to be driven 
out by the rest is a very extreme measure of 
elephantine discipline, and to be thus outlawed 
once is to be cast off forever, and the life of a 
" rogue " elephant thereafter has to be passed 
alone, with no contact whatsoever with the rest 
of the herd. 

Mr. Saunders gave us during our stay a picnic, 
which we heartily enjoyed, in the Government 
House grounds, a veritable paradise of sweetness 
and beauty, seven miles from Newara EUya. 

After a fortnight's stay, I made my way back 
to Colombo, where I found that my friends, 
during my absence, had arranged a benefit for 
me, which turned out a great success. I played 
Othello; Miss Beaudet, Desdemona; a Singalese 
lady, Emilia ; and the rest of the characters were 
taken by gentlemen amateurs, who succeeded 
beyond my expectations. Several days were 
passed in visits amongst hospitable Colombo 
folk, — there really seemed no limits to their 
kindness, — and then we took our departure for 
Bombay, to meet the new company my wife had 
organized and sent out from London to support 
me in a six weeks' engagement there. 



CHAPTER XVIL — India. 

BOMBAY. — MADRAS. — RANGOON. — MOULMEIN. 

" My ventures are not in one bottom trusted, 
Nor to one place ; nor is my whole estate 
Upon the fortune of this present year : 
Therefore, my merchandise makes me not sad." 

— The Merchant of Venice, Act i, so. 1. 

Second visit to Bombay — Counter-attractions — An unpopular theatre — 
Madras — A grand success — Rangoon — A novel theatre — Chinese 
carpenters — A poor set of Eui'opeans — Eurasians and Albanians 
— The Iving of Burmah — Moulmein — Two days in the Gulf of 
Martaban. 

Having already described the cities of Bom- 
bay and Calcutta, I need only now say that my 
second season in both of these places, although 
quite remunerative, was not such a marked suc- 
cess as my first. This was due to outside circum- 
stances, such as an influx of counter-attractions 
just at the time of our playing in both places. 
Two other theatrical companies were simulta- 
neously visiting India, having heard of my great 
success the previous season. One had come from 
London and the other from Australia. My 
second engagement in Calcutta was at an 
unpopular theatre, which also was unfortunate, 
but, nevertheless, I cleared all expenses, and five 
thousand dollars besides, out of Bombay and 
Calcutta in ten weeks. 

In February I accepted a capital offer for 
Madras, the " city of distances," where I met 



■2U AN ACTOE'S TOUB. 

with very generous support at the hands of — as 
I feel I must ever consider it — a most charming 
public, and recorded another grand victory. 

From Madras we crossed the Bay of Bengal to 
Rangoon, situated on the opposite coast, a place 
of no great interest. When I asked where the 
theatre was, they took me out into the country 
about four miles from the town, and showed me 
a large open place without walls, with a stage at 
the end. I again inquired for the theatre, and I 
was told that I was in it, but that the wooden 
framework had been removed by a local society 
that had given a ball a few days previous, and 
had had the panels constituting the walls of the 
hall taken out and had not yet replaced them, 
but the matter should have immediate attention. 
I told those in charge of this invisible hall that 
I should not act without its being walled, and I 
had to wait for over two days before the Chinese 
carpenters (they are the joiners all through the 
East) set the panels back and gave a "local 
habitation " to the Rangoon Theatre. 

I found rather a poor set of Europeans in Ran- 
goon, and even the better class are so completely 
engaged in rice-shipping, in the spring of the 
year, that few of them find time, or have the 
disposition, to go to the theatre. My principal 
support was from the Eurasians and Albanians. 
The country around Rangoon did not interest 
me much. The King of Burmah is a fiend, and 
lives well back in the interior. He has a peculiar 



BOMBAY. — MADRAS. — ETC. 256 

habit of beheading every one who contradicts 
him, and skulls are consequently very plentiful 
about his royal palaces. 

From Rangoon we went by the British India 
Line steamer to Moulmein, and here we were 
obliged to lie two days in front of the mouth 
of the river, in consequence of the low yearly 
springtide in the Gulf of Martaban. At last 
we were rowed up the stream about nine miles, 
and, to render our position still more comfortable, 
we were told that it teemed with crocodiles and 
other " ill-shaped fishes." 

We played two nights in Moulmein and were 
well supported by the people. The club lent us 
its theatre and made no charge whatever for the 
use of it. 

From Moulmein we went back to Singapore by 
the way of Penang and Malacca, and there we 
made another halt and played three times to 
crowded houses. We could have stayed a month 
longer, with great monetary recompense, but, 
unfortunately, the steamer Tanadice, that was to 
take us to Australia, left on a day which we 
were compelled to accept ; in such cases there 
is no room for individual choice. 



CHAPTER XVIIL — Australia. 

PORT DARWIN. 

" I '11 put a girdle round about the earth 
In forty minutes." 

— Midsummer-Night's Dream, Act ii, sc. 2. 

Old friends — The governor — The telegraphic importance of the 
place — Mineral wealth — Inauguration of the Town Hall — Caste 
— The Chinese residents — A cannibal village. 

Our first place of call, after an eight days' 
voyage, was Port Darwin, and the first object 
that caught my eye was a white trayman hauling 
freight from the foot of the bay. It was a 
pleasant sight, as I had not seen one for over 
two years. On landing, my hand was instantly 
grasped by my friend, Joseph Knight, who had 
become the chief judge of the district of Palmers- 
ton, and whom I had not seen since 1869, in 
Melbourne. Mr. Knight was the architect of the 
Victoria House of Parliament. He was delighted 
to see me, and handed me a letter, which read 
thus : — 

"From the Government Kesident, Palmerston, to D. E. 
Bandmann, Esq. 

" Come to the Residence and see an old friend, 
and have lunch. Yours truly, 

" G. R. McMiNis, 

" Government Resident." 



PORT DABWIN. 257 



So here, to ray surprise and delight, I found 
another old friend acting as governor of the 
port. I remembered him from my trip from 
Victoria to South Australia, in 1870, when we 
traveled for upward of six hundred miles across 
country together. I was on my way to Ade- 
laide to fulfil an engagement, and, desirous of 
seeing the country, I went overland, no easy 
trip in those days. McMinis was then at the 
head of the expedition sent out by the govern- 
ment to lay the transpacific cable, which was 
to unite Australia with the rest of the world. 
I found him as hearty and kind as ever, and 
he received Miss Beaudet and myself with the 
most thoughtful hospitality and made our short 
stay very pleasant. 

Port Darwin lies at the extreme corner of 
North Australia, and belongs to South Australia, 
although it is nearer to Queensland than to the 
former. It is a very convenient point of call for 
ships on their way to China or to the Malacca 
Straits, and has attained great importance from 
the fact that all telegrams from the Australasias 
have to go from there, as it is the point of con- 
nection with the straits, whence messages go by 
the way of India to Europe. The country round 
is purely tropical, and it is said to be very rich 
in minerals, metals, and coal. 

The town is fast growing into a place of 
considerable importance. It has a bi-weekly 
newspaper, several churches and schools, and 



258 AN AGTOE'8 TOUB. 

about four thousand inhabitants, including the 
Chinese. On our arrival they had just finished 
building the Town Hall, a very appropriate 
structure, and there was a universal desire that 
we should inaugurate it. The captain was 
appealed to, and promised to stay over for the 
occasion, that is, about eighteen hours. My 
carpenter soon erected a temporary stage, and we 
played Caste. The hall was crowded, but the 
fun of the thing was that the Chinese, hearing 
that the Town Hall was to be inaugurated as 
a " sing-song house " (their name for a theatre), 
flocked to the performance to see Caste, a refined 
comedy in three acts. The bored faces of these 
usually serene folk were most comical to behold, 
and no doubt they were happy when the whole 
thing was over. It could not have been very 
pleasant to those accustomed to the historical 
plays and farces of their national stage. 

During the day we took a drive to see a canni- 
bal village, situated about three miles from the 
town, by the sea-shore. We saw some of the 
cannibals, who, I was told, have had this place 
assigned to them by the government for residence. 
The place consists of about thirty miserable 
huts, and these aborigines, whose appetite for 
human flesh is a strong passion still prevalent, 
require great watching and are sharply looked 
after by the police. It is not seldom that a child, 
or a stray Chinaman, falls a victim to their feroc- 
ity and brutal tastes. They looked upon us with 



POBT DABWIN. 259 



scarcely concealed desires, but the ladies of our 
party were evidently the special objects of their 
observation. Perhaps they created a strong 
craving of their cannibal appetites, and were 
considered as so many desirable sweet morsels. 
Our brief stay at Port Darwin, notwithstand- 
ing the fierce eyes of the cannibals, was very 
enjoyable, and we formed many pleasant ac- 
quaintances. Amongst others whom I met was 
a son of Kingston, the friend of Charles Farrar 
Browne ("Artemus Ward"), who had formerly 
been my agent. He was then in government 
employ as a surveyor and doing very well. We 
pulled up anchor at one o'clock on the morning 
of the twenty-eighth of March, and started for 
Thursday Island, where we arrived on the first 
of April, a lovely Sunday morning. 



CHAPTER XIX. — Australia. 

THUESDAY ISLAND. 

"Here 's nothing to be got nowadays, unless thou can'st fish for 't." 

— Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Act ii, se. 1. 
•'Knew that we ventur'd on such dangerous seas, 

That, if we wrought our life, 'twas ten to one; 
And yet we ventur'd for the gain propos'd." 

— Henry IV (second part J, Act i, sc. 1. 
" A very dangerous flat and fatal, where the carcasses of many a 
tall ship lie buried." 

— TTie Merchant of Venice, Act Hi. sc. 1. 

"I would have men of such constancy put to sea, Ihat their busi- 
ness might be everytiiing, and their intent everywhere ; for that 's it 
that always makes a good voyage." 

— Twelfth Night, Act ii, sc. 4. 

Coral and pearl fisheries — Tricks of the fishermen— New Guinea- 
Torres Straits— A coral reef —The Tanadice in danger — The coast 
scenery. 

Thursday Island is the richest coral-sheU 
fishing-place in the world, and many fortunes have 
been made there by that occupation. The crews 
generally go out in small schooners, well-pro- 
visioned for a week or a fortnight, and divers 
go down to get the coral pearl-shells. As soon as 
they are brought on board, the sorters, most of 
whom are Malays, open the shell and look for 
the precious pearl. Of course the search is vain 
in many cases, but when they do find one their 
first effort is by every possible means to hide it, 
and the desire to keep it is so strong that they 
do not hesitate to swallow it, if they lack other 
ways of concealment. Indeed, this is a common 



THURSDAY ISLAND. 261 

practice with these knaves. In Ceylon, where 
the oyster-pearl fishing takes place once a year, 
the government sells the right of space of fishing 
by auction. Then the buyer goes out with his 
crew, and the oysters are raised and opened 
on the spot, and the pearls souglit for ; the 
principal thing for the proprietor to do is to watch 
the coolies who open the shells. They resort to 
all sorts of tricks, swallowing them, burying them 
in their armpits, cutting themselves and concealing 
a pearl in the wound. 

The coral pearl-fishers of Thursday Island are 
rather a rough lot ; they make money easily and 
freely and like to enjoy themselves, though it is 
sad to say that the highest felicity of these bois- 
terous fellows is in excessive drinking. One of 
them, reputed the wealthiest man on the island, 
came on board, and, as Artemus Ward would say, 
" he was the drunkenest man I ever seed." It took 
ten sailors and the captain himself to get him off 
the ship. They were obliged to tie him in a chair 
and lower him down to his boat by ropes. I was 
told that he had made money enough, and that his 
great ambition was to go to Sydney and stand for 
parliament. He has a great chance to succeed 
there ! 

Thursday Island is the point from which you 
go to Papua, or New Guinea. We arrived just at 
the moment to hear the news that the resident 
authorities had received orders from the prime 
minister of Queensland, Sir Thomas Mcllwraith, 



262 AN ACTOR'S TOUB. 

to annex New Guinea, on the ground that Ger- 
many was going to do it, and Queensland wished 
to spare the former the trouble by increasing her 
own possessions. 

While on the island we saw some of the most 
beautiful birds. They had migrated from New 
Guinea ; amongst them there were many birds-of- 
paradise, whose plumage appeared most gorgeous 
beneath the rays of the sun. 

On the third of April, in the Torres Straits, we 
were suddenly shaken up in a way that produced 
very painful sensations, and might have proved, 
in other circumstances, most disastrous. We 
struck a coral reef, but it was marvelous how 
our beautiful and lithe ship Tanadice glided 
through the danger, when serious consequences 
seemed most imminent. She actually danced 
along, and, although she struck the reef three 
times, she did not receive the slightest damage, 
as immediate investigation proved. To most of 
the passengers the matter appeared at first much 
more serious ; for the chief engineer, who stood 
by me at the time of the first collision with the 
reef, — pointing out some inhospitable spot on 
the coast of Queensland, where the natives are 
all cannibals, and dine off any poor, unfortunate, 
shipwrecked crews that are cast amongst them, 
— turned as pale as a sheet, and rushed off like 
lightning to make his examination of the affair. 

The next day we sighted the mail steamer of the 
British India Line, and our captain sent the third 



THUBSD AY ISLAND. 263 

mate on board with the unpleasant news as a 
warning. The point was afterward advertised in 
the Shippers' Gazette. The fact is, ships are 
never safe in the Torres Straits, which are full 
of reefs, and, as new ones are perpetually in 
formation, there is no more difficult place of 
navigation in the world. The scenery all along 
the straits is most beautiful, and must be seen 
to be truly realized. It is simply incomparable. 



CHAPTER XX. — Australia. 

TOWNSVILLE. — SYDNEY. — MELBOURNE. 

"I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be 
one of twenty to follow mine own teaching." 

— The Merchant of Venice, Act i, sc. 2. 

" Every inordinate cup is unblessed and the ingredient is the 
devil." 

— Othello, Act ii, sc. 3. 

"Ye have angels' faces, but heaven knows your hearts." 

— Henry VIII, Act in, sc. 1. 
" Get thee glass eyes ; 
And, like a scurvy politician, seem 
To see the things thou dost not." 

— King Lear, Act iv, sc. 6. 
"O, while you live. 
Tell truth, and shame the devil." 

— Henry IV (first part), Act Hi, sc. 1. 

Cooktown — Townsville — Cook's Kiver — Crocodiles — A trooper's 
story — Charter's Towers — Bockhampton — Maryborough — Bris- 
bane — Sydney — A Woman of the People — Temperance reform — 
The clergy — The Reverend C. F. Garnsey's letter — Lady Loftus — 
Great enthusiasm — Melbourne — Geelong — Tasmania — Auckland 

— The Zealandia — Compagnons de voyage — The brothers Redmond 

— Miss Hampson, the revivalist — "Ever so many sinners" — 
Captain Weber — Miss Hampson's opinions on Art and the theatre — 
She tells a story of her early gifts — A poor German pastor — Enter- 
tainment on board for the Seamen's Shipwreck and Orphan Society. 

On the fourth of April we arrived at Cook- 
town, the first point of interest in Queensland- 
It was once a great mining centre, but has 
lately declined considerably. We played there 
one night, while the steamer was waiting for 
us, and started on the following day for Towns- 
ville, a place fast rising into a proud position 
amongst the towns of Queensland. It has sprung 



TO WNS VILLE. — A' YDNE Y. — ME LB UliNE. 265 

up quite suddenly: an instance of that marvel- 
ous genius of life, movement, — one may well 
say creation, — that characterizes new countries. 

Townsville has a stream called Cook's River, 
crossing which, in a small boat, I felt somewhat 
nervous, as it is said to be full of crocodiles, and 
occasionally these unpleasant visitors lift their 
heads above the surface of the muddy stream 
and by way of affectionate embrace pull the 
boatman (he is the handiest because he stands 
up) down into their watery world, where they 
sport with him till he is dead, and then lay him 
out in some nice sunny spot on the bank of the 
river to decay : for the crocodile is an epicure in 
appetite and must have his meat just so, never 
eating his prey fresh: and when decomposition 
has set in, he makes a holiday feast of the body 
and lies down to sleep contentedly in the sun. 
They have pretty much disappeared as civilization 
has moved on, but up in the interior of the 
country they are still numerous in this river. 

A trooper gave me a stirring account of his 
incidental encounter with one of these terrible 
creatures. He was in pursuit of a criminal, 
and had good cause to suspect that he was 
concealed on the opposite side of Cook's River. 
The government had set a heavy price on the 
man's head, and the trooper was determined by 
every means in his power to trace and capture 
him. He was on horseback, and the banks of the 
stream were bare for miles, but at a distance of 



266 AN AGTOB'S TOUE. 

about a hundred yards he saw, as he thought, 
a long log near the water's edge, and made his 
way to it that he might tie his horse to it, and 
then swim across the river in search of the 
offender. Just as he was close to what he had 
taken for a log, to his horror it rose to a great 
height and he saw himself confronted by a croc- 
odile of enormous size, which had raised itself 
to its full length in the air ; his horse reared 
frantically, and he was nearly off his saddle 
when the monster glided noiselessly into the 
stream. Now, his own life was safe enough if 
he had hastily beaten a retreat, but in that case 
he would have been obliged to give up the 
hope of finding the outlaw and to forego the 
reward. With the courage and nerve of a true 
soldier who must do his duty although sure death 
look him in the face, he rode along the bank 
some little distance and then plunged his horse 
into the river, which at that place was only 
about twelve yards wide, and made for the farther 
side. Just, however, as his horse swam near the 
opposite bank the crocodile, which must have 
been a close observer of his movements, peeped 
out of the water, but the trooper, with the 
adroitness of a man in imminent peril, seized his 
carbine and hit the monster a severe blow on the 
proper point, and to his unspeakable relief it 
immediately disappeared, mortally wounded, in the 
bed of the stream. The trooper and his horse 
reached the bank in safety, and his courage and 



TO WN8 VILLE. — S YDNE Y. — MELB 6 UBNE. 207 

resolution were rewarded in his finding and, 
after a tussle in which he proved that dis- 
ciplined strength is able to cope with confirmed 
brutality and recklessness, capturing the ruffian, 
who for years had been a terror amongst the 
people of that neighborhood ; and he received 
the considerable monetary reward that had been 
set on his captive's head by the authorities. 

We played Shakespearean pieces at Townsville 
for six nights, and then passed on to Charter's 
Towers, a capital mining-place ; then to Mackay ; 
then to Rockhampton, a most important, perhaps 
the most important, northern town ; then to 
Maryborough, a wretched, mean spot ; then to 
Gympie, a dead mining-place ; and so reached 
Brisbane for a second time, and I was surprised 
at the marvelous growth of the town in the 
interim. We played a splendid engagement at 
the new theatre. From Brisbane we passed on 
to Sydney, where I purposed at the time to 
stay but three weeks, but remained over four 
months. We played one piece, A Woman of the 
People, for upward of two months to crowded 
houses, and it is said that the play had an 
unusual moral significance, its influence on the 
crowds who flocked to witness it being in kind 
and degree quite unexampled in the history of 
the Australian stage. I cannot give too much 
praise to Miss Beaudet in connection with this 
performance ; she was at her best, and elicited 
universal eulogium, and it is owing to her 



268 AN ACTOR'S TOUn. 

powerful and splendid acting that much was 
done toward lessening the cursed hold of drink 
on the men and women of Sydney, and for the 
sweetening and sanctity of a thousand homes. 
The leading clergy were much affected by these 
results, and the ReverendC. F. Garnsey, rector 
of Christ Church, addressed the following letter 
to the Sydney Herald: — 

" Christ Church, Sydney, July 31, 1883. 
" To the Editor : /Sir, — For many years past I 
have abstained from the theatre, from the feeling 
that the ordinary plays presented to the public 
missed their object as expressed by our great 
dramatist, the immortal Shakespeare, whose end, 
both at the first and now, was, and is, to hold, 
as it were, the mirror up to nature, to show virtue 
her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very 
age and body of the time its form and pressure. 
Rather it seemed to me that the aim and intention 
of too many of the writers for the stage was to 
pander to unwholesome tastes and feelings, and 
to present scenes at once gross, sensational, and 
corrupt. Having had the opportunity of witness- 
ing the performance of A Woman of the People, 
I have no hesitation whatever in expressing my 
conviction that it achieved, in a very marked 
manner, the desired object I have indicated, and 
must influence many who are able to see it for 
good. It is a true picture of life, powerfully 
exciting the good impulses which the Creator has 



TO WNS VILLE. — 8 YDNE Y. — ME LB O UENE. 209 

implanted in our breasts, and holding up to scorn 
and detestation that well-known character in the 
world, 'the jolly good fellow,' who, in his own 
absence of self-restraint, becomes the ruin of 
others and the blight of many homes. It is free 
from coarseness and vulgarity, while it points 
most strongly to the one moral, the evil of over- 
indulgence in drink. 

" C. F. Garnsey." 

The excitement in the city was intense ; every- 
body went to see the play : the j^ulpit and the 
pew, the church, the wineshop, and the alehouse, 
saints and sinners, — all were represented, and 
crowded pit, galleries, and boxes, night after 
night and week after week. It was a sight that 
did one's heart good : to see so many white 
cravats and unmistakable high-cut vests scattered 
amongst the " gods " above and the mortals 
below, and one could but hope it might do them 
good, and tend greatly — at least so far as Sydney 
was concerned — to break down that partition of 
bigotry and uncharity that has so long existed 
between two, when rightly considered, kindred 
institutions — the Pulpit and the Stage. The 
spectacle, recurring as it did every evening 
throughout the long run of the play, brought 
to mind with new force the words of Wagner 
to Faust in Goethe's immortal masterpiece: — 

" An actor, oft I 've heard it said, at least 
May give instruction even to a priest." 



270 AN ACTOB'S TOUB. 

Lady Loftus, the wife of the governor, was 
present, and was charmed with Miss Beaudet's 
acting. The play was placed under the united 
patronage of all the temperance societies in 
Sydney, and for five weeks the house was 
regularly sold out within a quarter of an hour 
after the doors were opened, and the enthusiasm 
was unparalleled by anything I have witnessed in 
connection with the stage. I cleared upward of 
fifteen thousand dollars by this piece alone. 

We paid another visit to Melbourne for two 
weeks, and by special request we performed four 
nights at Geelong. I did not, however, know, 
when I complied with it, the real character of the 
place, or I might not have gone at all. It is one 
of those pseudo-religious towns in which opera 
bouffe and variety-shows are the only proper 
thing. 

On the second of November we went once 
mor6 to Tasmania, by the way of Launceston, 
and here I may say that I finished my tour, 
save for my stay at Honolulu on my way 
back to America, of which the remaining chapter 
of this book is the record. I had important 
business to attend to in New York ; and there 
was an additional reason for bringing my tour 
to an end, in the domestic affliction that had 
visited the home of Miss Beaudet. Her mother's 
life was despaired of, and, with the devotion of a 
true daughter, — art, fame, and money were all 
of secondary consideration in such a crisis, — 



TO WNS VILLE. — ,S YDNE Y. — MELBO UllNE. 271 

she wished to return. The heart of the thorough 
woman asserted itself beyond the art of the 
actress ; and on this sad news reaching us, we at 
once prepared for our return voyage. 

"We traveled by the way of New Zealand to 
catch the Pacific Mail steamer in Auckland; 
and found on board the Zealandia quite a 
pleasant company of travelers, amongst whom 
I may mention the brothers Redmond, the 
well-known Irish members of Parliament, whom 
I found very charming and highly intellectual 
gentlemen, and greatly enjoyed their society. 
The Australian revivalist. Miss Hampson, a 
lady who by nature seemed to have been in- 
tended to be very graceful and pleasing, but 
whose peculiar religion seemed to have rendered 
graceless and unattractive, was also one of the 
passengers. Her audiences in Australia, she 
informed me, had been large, and she had 
"converted ever so many sinners." She was 
evidently worn out by her miraculous doings, 
and was traveling for rest. By accident, or the 
cunning intention of Captain Weber, one of the 
most genial men I have ever met, who perhaps 
thought I needed the revivalist's wonder-work- 
ing power to be exerted on me, my seat Avas 
placed opposite to Miss Hampson's at table. 
I was thus naturally thrown into somewhat 
closer society with this lady than others ; for one 
must be courteous, and Miss Hampson traveled 
alone. I had several conversations with her, 



272 AX ACTOWS TOUB. 

and purposely avoided every subject that might 
jar on her feelings, seem wicked in her judgment, 
or worldly to her sentiments ; even the word 
theatre was banished, because "the theatre is 
such a wicked place, you know." But the fatal 
moment came ; for, on one occasion, Miss Hamp- 
son spoke with great enthusiasm of nature, art, 
and things that are beautiful, and quite un- 
consciously we drifted into a tabooed subject; 
and, as the devil would have it, gentle reader, 
that subject was the stage ! Alas ! I had been 
misled by the lady's conversation in thinking she 
was capable of a wide and general view ; but as 
soon as I mentioned the word theatre it was all 
over, and the revivalist stood before me, to use 
certain famous words more appropriately than 
than they were originally by Lord Beaconsfield, 
"inebriated with the exuberance of her own 
verbosity," in all the superstition, conceit, and 
cant, the current coin of the class to which she 
belongs, who speak of what they know nothing 
on the hearsay of those who know no more 
than themselves. I was not at all annoyed by 
what the lady said about Shakespeare and the 
stage : the first she considered " obscene ; " the 
latter a place of "diabolical wickedness." I 
listened with the patience of a Job to her 
ignorant calumnies, bigotry, and intolerance, 
and then said: — 

" Have you ever been to a theatre ? " 
" No ! me go to a theatre ? Who do jovl think 
we, to go to such a place ? " 



TO WNS VILL E. — S YDNE Y. — MELB URNE. 273 

" How do you know anything about it then ? " 
I asked. 

" I can imagine it." 

"Have you ever been in a picture-gallery?" 

" They are not needed by those who have 
visions of heaven." 

" Have you ever heard an opera ? " 

"No." 

"Why do you think, then, that you would not 
feel edified by hearing a Patti or a Nilsson ? " 

" Because no voice can come up to mine." 

At this point she regaled me with a story, 
which reveals so well the immeasurable conceit 
that so often characterizes such very humble, 
saintly souls as her own, — to whom all the world 
and every interest of life is wicked, save the 
prayer-meeting or the rude, vulgar, revival 
service, — that I cannot withhold it from the 
reader. 

"When I was a child," she said, "of about six 
years of age " (I doubt if she ever was a sweet, 
simple-hearted, six-year-old child), " Jenny Lind 
was just making the round of her charitable 
concerts. She came to our town, and, as she 
generally required a foil, a lady who had to sing 
before her, that she might triumph all the more 
afterward, we were, of course, expected to put in 
our programme such a singer. Our pastor said: 
' We will give her a foil this time which she shall 
never forget ! ' and when the evening arrived, and 
the hall was so full that not a pin could drop to 



274 AN AOTOB'S TOUB. 

the ground, our dear pastor — now, alas, a sainted 
memory — lifted me on a chair and said : ' Sing 
to me, darling.' I would have gone through fire 
and water for him, I loved him so. Well, I sang. 
I don't know what it was : it came like inspira- 
tion : but when I had finished there was such 
applause and enthusiasm that Jenny Lind was 
thoroughly forgotten. The excitement was past 
description, and Jenny Lind came and flung 
her arms around my neck, and, sobbing as 
though her heart would break, she said: 'My 
child, I cannot sing after such an ovation ; my 
talent would fall flat after your heavenly gift.' " 

I need scarcely say that, as Miss Hampson 
related this triumph of her early years, the tears 
of self-satisfaction glistened in her spiritual eyes ; 
those eyes which had looked on the thousands 
she had saved from everlasting damnation, and 
which had so eagerly, many a time no doubt, 
looked to the amount of the collection that is 
usually a conspicuous part of the programme at 
meetings in which such spiritual work is done. 

After this conversation I heard, every morning, 
opposite to my cabin, where Miss Hampson had 
her quarters, a sort of guttural chant, which 
perhaps Miss Hampson considered divine, and 
devised for my special benefit, but which gen- 
erally drove me early into my chair on the 
hurricane-deck ; for I preferre(f the cackling of 
the geese to that heavenly melody. I am afraid 
all this seemed very wicked to Miss Hampson, 



TOWNSVILLE. — SYDXEl. — MELBOURNE. 275 

but I really could n't help it, and this much is 
clear to me : that her voice, if it had ever 
rivaled, which I doubt, the matchless melody 
and richness of Jenny Lind's, had sadly deterio- 
rated; and that, if it were ever inspired from 
above, it was certainly on later occasions now 
inspired from below — from a lost world. 

There was a poor German pastor, with his 
wife and six children, on board, who had steerage 
tickets, and, therefore, rather a rough time of 
it. The girls, some of them grown-up, had to 
mingle with the general steerage company, and 
had no place of privacy or comfort. I spoke with 
Miss Hampson about these poor young gentle- 
women, but she no doubt thought it was outside 
of her lofty sphere to administer to worldly com- 
fort. Her calling was beyond such trifles, though 
it is well to remember that He, whose disciples 
true Christians are, cared with great tenderness 
and compassion for the poor, the suffering, and 
the innocent lambs of the flock. 

I afterward spoke with Captain Weber, who is 
well known to be a kind, noble-hearted man, and 
he immediately moved the whole family into the 
second cabin, where they had separate rooms and 
all the comfort they could wish. The parson was 
very grateful, and we became great friends. He 
did not preach against the theatre, but held, with 
other noble-minded priests and men, that what- 
ever is good and beautiful is a gift of God, to 
be respected, admired, loved. He was a man of 



276 AN AGTOB'S TOUB. 

fine insights, — of that poetic thoughtfulness and 
sweet temper that 

"Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 
Sermons in stones, and good in everything." 

During the voyage we gave an entertainment 
for the Seamen's Shipwreck and Orphan Society, 
of Sydney, and realized a nice sum. Miss Hamp- 
son, of course, was not present ; she was either 
praying for the conversion of souls, or enam- 
ored just then more likely by her own melodious 
and heavenly voice. 

I can strongly recommend the Pacific Mail 
steamers for comfort, speed, and safety, for I 
always feel sorry to leave them. One is at 
home the moment one enters one's cabin. 



CHAPTER XXI. — Hawaiian Islands. 

HONOLULU. 

" Give them friendly welcome every one : 
Let them want nothing that my house affords." 

— Taming of the Shrew (introduction), sc. 1. 

"Give me the cups, 
And let the kettle to the trumpet speak, 
The trumpet to the cannoneer without. 
The cannons to the heavens, the heavens to earth. 
Now the king drinks to Hamlet! " 

— Hamlet, Act v, sc. 2. 

Old friends— His majesty. King Kalakaua — Aloha! — King Kame- 
hameha Y— Luualila, his successor— His admiration for his ancestor, 
Kamehameha I — Lunalila's character and habits — A visit to his 
suburban cottage — Stories of liim — " Firewater " — The old Ha- 
waiian laws against spirituous liquors — The repeal of those laws 
a great misfortune — A land of " brotherly love " — The Hawaiians — 
The probable total extinction of the Hawaiian race — The causes — 
The Hawaiian nobility — The prosperity of the islands — The wMte 
man's blessings — The Hawaiian kings have an open eye for business 

— King Kamchameha's poi factory — King Kalakaua's service of 
city cabs — Residences of the upper class — The new royal palace — 
The throne-room — Produce, manufactures, and shipping — The 
reciprocity treaty Avith the United States — International communica- 
tion—The position of the Chinese — The scales turned toward 
America — Tlie government seemingly monarchical, in reality a 
republic — The king's power — The privy council and legislature — 
Electoral representation — Government expenses — King Kalakaua's 
the most j)rosperous of all reigns — The king's appearance, character, 
and habits — John Cummins, the king's friend — His influence 
over the natives — A htila — Waimanalo — The Pali — Good Mexican 
mustangs — "The world moves" — A Hawaiian reception — Sugar- 
mills — The king's arrival — A great banquet — The hulakui — 
Hawaiian music — The public taste of Honolulu— The theatre — 
The public library — Celebration of the' prime minister's birthday — 
Colonel Spreckels — The king's political views — Christian Chinese 

— San Francisco again, after traveling seventy thousand miles by 
land and sea. 

We arrived at Honolulu on the twenty-third 
of December, and were besieged by old friends, 



278 AN ACTOR'S TOUB. 

Dr. and Mrs. Magrew, Paul Newman, the attor- 
ney-general, and his majesty, King Kalakaua, 
who urged us to stay at least for one week and 
give a few entertainments, and, although we were 
anxious to get to New York, we could not 
withstand the pressure ; besides, Miss Beaudet 
had more reassuring news of her mother — the 
worst was past ; and so with relieved minds 
we consented to remain a week or two. 

Aloha! (the native expression for welcome, 
good-day, God bless you, etc.) is not merely 
the audible greeting of the stranger as he places 
his foot upon Hawaiian soil; but, in a way that 
he is not able fully to explain, an impression 
that means this and a great deal more spreads 
itself over his inner consciousness and brings 
with it a sense of happiness and a feeling of 
almost absolute contentment with his environ- 
ment. There grows up within him a feeling 
that here he would like to remain at least for 
some time, and that feeling is strengthened and 
deepened by what he sees around him during 
his journeyings about the islands, and by his 
contact with the people. This feeling came 
over me on the occasion of my first visit, and 
on every successive one which I have made the 
feeling has become stronger, and. my mind has 
become more and more sensitive to the attrac- 
tions of the island. 

During my visit in 1871 I had opportunities 
of becoming intimate with the then reigning 



HONOLULU. 279 



king, Kamehameha V ; and also with Lunalila, 
who succeeded him on the Hawaiian throne, but 
who was not permitted to enjoy his sovereignty 
very long. He died after a very short reign. 
Of all the princes he was the most beloved and 
mourned. He had a geniality of nature which 
was to a high degree charming, and could win 
the hearts of his subjects quicker than most 
sovereigns win a kindly thought. Hardly a 
day passed during my stay that Lunalila did 
not spend a few hours with me in my cottage, 
and play and chat with my little girl, of whom 
he was very fond, and took a great delight in 
telling her marvelous stories of the heroism 
and achievements of his great ancestor, Kame- 
hameha I. He understood the child -mind as 
very few other men I have met have done, 
and my little one loved him to come ; under 
the spell of his voice her imagination became 
all aglow, and no doubt she often felt her- 
self surrounded by fairies, or maybe one of 
the little princesses in the court of the great 
Kamehameha I. Lunalila lived at that time 
in one of the beautiful suburbs of Honolulu, a 
few miles from the town, where he enjoyed the 
sea air and the life of a free and independent 
citizen. It is sad to say that he was very 
much given to that worst of all evils, " firewater," 
and that this habit shortened his otherwise good 
and noble life. He was of a most lively dis- 
position, a man of excessive fun and merriment 



280 AN ACTOR'S TOUE. 

of soul, and hated intensely conventionality in 
manners and in dress. On one occasion he 
urgently asked me to pay him a visit at his 
little suburban cottage. I promised to do so, 
and my friend Dr. Magrew made up a party 
consisting of Mrs. Magrew, my wife, the doctor, 
and myself, and drove up to the Diamond Head 
summit, the loftiest rock in Hawaii, close to the 
seashore, near to which his cottage was situated. 
I recollect that when we had almost reached our 
destination the doctor and I noticed the future 
king on the top of a cocoa-palm, busy decap- 
itating some of its heads, in the garb of Adam 
before he met Eve. We, of course, with our 
wives by our sides, could not place him in 
the predicament of calling upon him in this 
costume au naturel (alas ! the world has lost 
its innocence), so we drove right on, as we 
jDerceived that he had noticed us, and gave him 
time to come down and to get into clothes, if not 
more innocent, at least more conventional. This 
he understood very well, for when we returned to 
the cottage, about half an hour later, we were 
received by him attired in a most tasteful white 
dress, and were conducted with great courtesy 
into his scrupulously clean and comfortable 
parlor, where we found the New York Herald^ 
the London Times, and the latest fashionable 
society papers of England and America lying on 
the table. 

On a certain occasion Lunalila presided at a 



HONOLULU. 281 



public banquet, at which King Kamehameha V 
was expected. The king was late, and the guests 
were tired of waiting, and it is reported that 
Lunalila rose and said : " Gentlemen, we will 
wait no longer for the king ; we will let the 
band play, ' God Save the King ' ; and, if his 
majesty does not appear during that time, we 

will let the band play, ' God d the king.' " 

His majesty, it seems, did appear, and the second 
part of the musical programme suggested was, 
happily, not gone through. 

When a prince, Lunalila had generally an escort 
of native boys with him, who carried a parcel 
under each arm, which had the suspicious appear- 
ance of a neck of a bottle peeping out of some 
corner or other; for in those days the natives 
were prohibited alcoholic drinks, and could only 
get them clandestinely. The law at that time 
was very strict relating to alcohol, absolutely 
prohibiting its manufacture, the act of selling 
or providing it for others, and rendering punish- 
able its use. That law, subsequent facts have 
proved, was not a bit too stringent; for since 
its repeal the population of the Hawaiian Islands 
has decreased seventy-five per cent. Here is 
an item for every temperance lecturer; but 
none save those who have traveled in that 
beautiful country and partaken of the hospi- 
tality of the natives and come to feel a great 
respect for the many noble qualities of the men 
and women they have met there, will realize all 
the pain and sadness of this deplorable fact. 



282 AN ACTOR'S TOUB. 

I may well call the Hawaiian Islands the 
land of " brotherly love." The Hawaiian is, by 
nature, of a happy and generous disposition. He 
looks on life as a thing of joy. He moves in a 
sphere of laughter and love. I have never seen 
an angry Hawaiian. You may abuse him and 
ill-treat him, but he laughs and takes it quietly. 
Civilization has no power upon him. He is a 
child of nature, wlio sings and laughs and loves, 
the whole day long, and only under compulsion 
or necessity will do anything else. He hates 
work, especially manual labor. He has all the 
instincts of a gentleman and is happy in his idle- 
ness. He will spend twenty-four hours in a round 
of amusements, and, when through, commence the 
same over again, and so on, week by week, and 
month by month. Such a being is especially 
susceptible to the influence of "firewater," and 
its havoc has been tremendous ; for, in less than 
ten years, the population has fallen from one 
hundred thousand to forty-seven thousand on 
these islands. Small-pox and leprosy, introduced 
by the Chinese, may, no doubt, have had some- 
thing to do with this ; but, to a great extent, it is 
due to the effect of excessive drinking amongst 
the natives ; and, if things continue as they are 
in this respect, there seems nothing to be looked 
for, save the total extinction of the Hawaiian 
race. When I say " total extinction," I mean, of 
course, of the pure, native stock from a true 
hupimia (source). During the last twenty-five 



HONOLULU. 283 



years there has been considerable deterioration in 
racial purity, owing to frequent intermarriages, 
and to the still more frequent promiscuous inter- 
course, against which there is no restraint, or 
little, at best, in the habits and customs of the 
people ; so that a pure kuauJcau (genealogy) is, 
even now, somewhat difficult to find. 

The principal nobility of the Hawaiian race are 
nearly all married to Europeans or Americans. 
Her Royal Highness the Princess Liliuokalani, the 
heiress-apparent, is married to His Excellency 
John Owen Dominis, an American. Her Royal 
Highness the Princess Likelike to Mr. Archibald 
Scott Cleghorn, an Englishman; another princess 
to Mr. C. R. Bishop, an English banker, and a 
large number of native and half-caste ladies to 
Europeans ; so that there seems every reason for 
thinking that within a few decades, at most five 
or ten, the pure-blooded Hawaiian will have 
disappeared. All who love poesy and natural 
sentiment will deeply regret this, for there is no 
other race on the globe so generous, hospitable, 
and kind. They have opened their country to 
the white man, and have told him to come in 
and take what he likes. The white man has 
done so, and carried with him his blessings: 
new industries, cant, and brandy. The first 
have done wonders, and will make these islands 
a source of jealousy, perhaps an object of strife, 
to the various nations of the civilized world. 
The second, up till now, has left the people 



284 AN ACTOn'S TOUB. 

untarnished from the sheer force of their native 
nobleness, and the third has reduced the race 
to its present deplorable numerical condition. 
In their primitive state, they lived in their 
scrupulously clean grass-houses, with a few goats, 
and a patch of taro (a native vegetable similar 
to the potato) land before them, spending their 
lives in fishing, hunting, singing, and liula kin 
(dancing), and were, in many respects, a strong, 
noble people. But since civilization has come 
amongst them, with its accompanying tempta- 
tions and coils, they are rapidly dying out. 

Confronted by this and similar facts in other 
countries — New Zealand, for instance — makes 
it a thing devoutly to be wished that the pro- 
found knowledge of natural laws and moral 
sequences, the exquisite wisdom, and — may I 
not say? — divine philosophy, that lie in Friar 
Lawrence's soliloquy should be uttered elsewhere, 
and in other ways, than by the Franciscan in his 
cell. It would be well if it could be dropped 
from off his lips into the heart of human society, 
or carried on some mighty voice "as the sound 
of many waters" far and wide throughout the 
world ; and nowhere, for friendship's sake, could 
I desire it spoken in stronger, but at the same 
time sweeter, accents, — with the rousing power 
of the thunder, yet with the "persuasive tongue" 
of pure eloquence, — than to the people of that 
fair, sea-girt isle, Hawaii, for 



HONOLULU. 285 



" I have loved her ever since I saw her : and 
Still I see her beautiful;" 

whose happiness I wish, with all my soul, to last 
forever : — 

"The gray-ey'd moon smiles on the frowning night, 
Checkering the Eastern clouds with streaks of light; 
And flecked darkness like a drunkard reels 
From forth day's pathway and Titan's fiery wheels : 
Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye 
The day to cheer, and night's dank dew to dry, 
I must upfill this osier cage of ours 
With baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers. 
The earth, that 's nature's mother, is her tomb ; 
What is her burying-grave, that is her womb; 
And from her womb children of divers kind 
We sucking on her natural bosom find: 
Many for many virtues excellent, 
None but for some, and yet all different. 
O, raickle is the powerful grace that lies 
In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities: 
For naught so vile that on the earth doth live 
But to the earth some special good doth give; 
Nor aught so good, but, strain'd from that fair use, 
Kevolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse: 
Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied, 
And vice sometime 's by action dignified. 
Within the infant rind of tliis small flower 
Poison liath residence, and medicine power: 
For this, being smelt, with that act cheers each part; 
Being tasted, slays all senses with the lieart. 
Two such opposed kings encamp them still 
In man, as well as herbs, grace and rude will; 
And, where the worser is predominant. 
Full soon the canker death eats up that plant." 



286 AN AG TOR'S TOUB. 

It is not my purpose to give a description of 
the marvelous commercial progress these islands 
have made during the past fifteen years, but I 
cannot pass silently over the gigantic strides 
Honolulu has made from' the time of my first 
visit, in 1871, to that of my second (1882-83). 
A few remarks on the subject, though by no 
means exhaustive, may be of value or interest 
to many who may read these pages.* 

When I was in that Garden of Eden in 1871, 
the native beauty of the place was in its fullest 
splendor, but commerce was still in its infancy. 
King Kamehameha, however, even then had 
an open eye to business, which seems to have 
been a characteristic of many of the Hawaiian 
monarchs. He had, amongst other enterprises, 
started a poi (a native food made of tare) 
factory on his own account ; just as the present 
king, Kalakaua, is the proprietor of the greater 
number of the city cabs. But still the city was 
in a primitive state of growth, and trade was 
only beginning to gather about it. Since then 
large warehouses, wharves, and factories have 
been built, and private dwellings risen, which 
will compare favorably with the most palatial 
mansions of the great cities of Europe and 
America. The residences of Colonel Spreckels, 
Justice Judd, Mr. Cleghorn, Mr. Bishop, Dr. 



*The reader who is desirous of fuller information is referred to the 
capital work, entitled " The Hawaiian Handbook," published annually 
by Thomas G. Thrum, Honolulu. — [Ed. 



HONOLULU. 287 



Magrew, and those of numbers of others, are 
specimens of exceptional elegance, grace, and 
beauty. The new Royal Palace, too, is a struc- 
ture which would do honor to any city in the 
world. The throne-room is of remarkable beauty, 
and has few equals in Europe itself. 

But these are social matters: the wealth and 
prosperity of a country is founded on its produce, 
manufactures, and shipping interests; and it is 
in these respects that Honolulu has made 
such marvelous advancement. Since the United 
States has extended the reciprocity treaty to the 
Hawaiian Islands, the coasting-trade alone has 
increased from one steamer, twenty-six schooners, 
and eight sloops, of a tonnage of sixteen hundred 
and twenty-five, in 1875, to ten steamers, thirty- 
eight schooners, and three sloops, of a tonnage 
of fifty-four hundred and thirty-five in 1882; 
and the sugar-planting interest has assumed such 
enormous proportions that the estimated value of 
it is calculated to be upward of sixteen million 
dollars. The exports of domestic produce, too, 
such as sugar, rice, oil, bone, hides, wool, syrups, 
and fruits, reached the value of eight million one 
hundred and sixty-five thousand nine hundred 
and thirty-one dollars ; while the import trade was 
four million nine hundred and seventy-four thou- 
sand five hundred and ten dollars. International 
communication has greatly been facilitated ; and 
where there only used to be a monthly postal 
service, there is now a weekly one both to and 



AN ACTOB'S TOUB. 



from America, and a monthly one to and from 
Australia. 

The Chinese threatened at first to take the 
leading position in Hawaiian affairs ; but the 
prompt action of the last government, headed by 
an influential American cabinet, put a check to 
the ambition of the Celestials and a limit to 
their power, and turned the scales toward 
America. 

The government of the Hawaiian Islands, 
although seemingly managed on monarchical 
principles, is in reality much more like a 
republic. The king, in idea, is the supreme 
power, but in fact he has very little to say, and 
still less to do, in active work of government. 
This is carried on by the privy council and the 
legislature. The privy council consists of the 
four ministers, who form the cabinet for the 
time being. Those at present being the premier 
and minister of foreign affairs. His Excellency 
W. M. Gibson; the minister of home affairs. 
His Excellency C. J. Gerlick ; the minister of 
finance. His Excellency I. M. Kapena, and the 
attorney-general, His Excellency P. Newman. 

These ministers are responsible for all their 
actions and advisory influence over the king to 
the legislature, which meets every year, and is 
the actual ruling-power of the country. The 
members of the legislature are elected by the 
people. Some idea of the growing importance of 
the country can be formed from the fact that the 



IIONOL UL U. 289 



outlay for government purposes, including the 
civil service, amounted, in 1882, to two million 
one hundred and ninety-six thousand and six 
dollars ; and in 1883 to three million five hundred 
and sixty-three thousand one hundred and six- 
teen dollars; the expenses of his majesty's house- 
hold alone during the latter year being one 
hundred and forty-eight thousand five hundred 
dollars ; out of which his majesty received fifty 
thousand dollars ; the queen, sixteen thousand 
dollars ; the heiress-presumptive, sixteen thousand 
dollars; while twenty -two thousand five hun- 
dred dollars were appropriated to defray the 
expenses of his majesty's tour around the world ; 
the remainder being allotted to the household and 
other expenses of his majesty. But even these 
large demands on the pockets of the people were 
not seriously felt, owing to the great prosperity 
of the country. From its present splendid 
position and its revenue, there can be no doubt 
that, whether in consequence of the fortunate 
spirit of the time or to exceptional circumstances, 
King Kalakaua's reign has been the most 
prosperous in the history of the monarchy of 
the Hawaiian Islands; though it is generally 
admitted that Kamehameha's was the most 
beneficial to the people in general. 

Kamehameha V was a very simple gentleman, 
who was fond of driving about in an American 
buggy to look after his poi factory and exten- 
sive business, of presiding over lotteries estab- 



290 AN ACTOB'S TOUB. 

lished throughout the land, and of saving money 
for the people ; and, be it said, of being wulie 
tvulied (gently soothed on the forehead) by the 
hand of a wahine (sorceress). Lunalila cared 
only for his personal enjoyment ; but the present 
king, Kalakaua, is made of " sterner stuff." 

In appearance Kalakaua is somewhat portly, but 
of a most dignified bearing, refined nature, and 
gentle manners. When he receives his visitors he 
generally wears a suit of white flannel and a large, 
black necktie ; and his deportment is easy and 
graceful. I knew him before he was king, when 
he was still in the post-office as a clerk. Lunalila, 
of whom he was somewhat jealous, introduced me 
to him. His reception of me was most courteous 
and hearty, and he arranged a hula (festival) with 
his old friend, John Cummins, in honor of myself 
and several other guests from San Francisco. 
The hula was to take place at the summer-resort 
and ^ugar-plantation of his friend at Waimanalo, 
about fifteen miles from Honolulu; where Kala- 
kaua has a pretty little cottage allotted to him for 
his exclusive use. 

Of John Cummins it is difficult to give a pen- 
and-ink portrait, but those who have visited these 
lovely islands and met the king's friend will 
acknowledge the truth when I say that he is one 
of " nature's gentlemen." 

" There 's in him stuff that puts him to these ends : 
For, being not propp'd by ancestry (whose grace 
Chalks successors their way), nor cali'd upon 



HONOLULU. 291 



For high feats done to the crown; neither allied 
To eminent assistants, but, spider-like, 
Out of his self-drawing web, he gives us note, 
The force of his own merit makes his way; 
A gift that heaven gives for him, which buys 
A place next to the king." 

Born of an English father, from whom he 
received the name of Cummins, and a native 
mother, he looks more like a Mexican nobleman, 
or an Arab sheik, than a Hawaiian. A large- 
featured man, with a fine forehead and slightly 
bronzed skin, he bears the stamp of generosity, 
goodness, and nobility on his massive counte- 
nance. His greatest joy is to confer happiness 
on others, and he uses his fortune to assist the 
poor and to give pleasure to his friends. It was 
greatly owing to his influence with the natives, 
who are deeply attached to him, that Kalakaua 
ascended the throne. I may style him the 
Hawaiian Warwick ; for in appearance and 
dignity he recalls the celebrated "king-maker." 
On the day of the hula we started for his 
plantation, at nine o'clock in the morning. 
There was quite a cavalcade of ladies and 
gentlemen on horseback, decorated with lais 
(wreaths of flowers presented by the native 
ladies to the gentlemen, and worn around 
the neck as the sign of friendship), left the 
Hawaiian Hotel for Waimanalo. It was a fan- 
tastic sight to see tliis motley company of 
horsemen and horsewomen, the ladies riding 



292 AN' AC TOE'S TOUR. 

cross-legged, in all sorts of fancy-dresses, through 
the town. 

About eight miles from Honolulu we arrived at 
the dreaded Pali ; a pass in the range of mountains 
behind the town over which our route lay, which 
only fifteen or twenty years back was considered 
an impossibility for an European lady, and an 
extraordinary feat of skill for a man, to descend. 
The descent is so steep, abrupt, and sudden, that 
even those who have made the journey several 
times feel somewhat uneasy on each successive' 
occasion. On this journey, however, our horses, 
good Mexican mustangs, were wonderfully sure- 
footed. They picked their way with the greatest 
caution, and never made a mistake, whether they 
had to jump over a ditch or balance themselves 
upon a precipitous rock ; so we were borne safely 
over the entire pass, which in some places well- 
nigh takes one's breath away and makes one's 
hair stand on end. It takes a good rider (or 
rather a good horse, for the rider has little to do 
with it save manage to keep his brain cool and 
himself in the saddle) about twenty minutes to 
descend the Pali, and the sense of relief that 
ensues is unspeakable. Those few minutes seem 
an eternity, and every inch of the way a jeopardy 
of life or limb. Beyond the pass the country 
opens in a glorious panorama of beauty to the 
eye, and Waimanalo is reached after a journey 
of some seven miles through the most lovely 
undulating scenery imaginable. We made a halt 



HONOLULU. 203 



for refreshment within two miles of our destina- 
tion, at the summer residence of Colonel I. H. 
Boyd, a fine young native gentleman, and one 
of his majesty's staff. His residence is on thq 
top of a huge mountain, and I was somewhat 
surprised to find iced champagne, delicious sweet- 
meats, and cake, awaiting us ; the Australian 
bush damper and tea would not have aroused 
my curiosity, but that iced champagne and cakes 
of Huntley and Palmer should be served on the 
top of a mountain thirteen miles away from 
Honolulu, and in a country that only a hundred 
and six years ago .was still undiscovered, is 
certainly enough to justify wonder, or at least an 
astonishing proof of the quick pace at which 
" the world moves " — in quite another sense than 
Galileo's — in these days. After these refresh- 
ments and a redecoration of the gentlemen with 
lais, and a thousand expressions of alohas, we 
took our departure, and soon reached the highest 
peak in the neighborhood, where a scene opened 
to view of surpassing beauty, leaving on the 
mind impressions never to be effaced. Beneath 
us, in the valley of Waimanalo, we could now 
see the rich sugar-plantation, sugar-mills, keaniani 
polisates (village houses), and charming meadow- 
lands that constitute the estate of John Cum- 
mins ; while beyond these, spreading far and 
wide, the ocean, serenely quiet: the blue above, 
the blue below, smiling at each other. 

Having at last reached the village, a couple 



294 AN A CTOB'S TO Ufi. 

of dozen of servants came forward and took 
charge of our horses ; while the king's musicians 
and dancers (who had gone on before) struck 
up their instruments and received us in true 
Hawaiian fashion. Our noble host conducted 
us to our quarters, and all the ladies were 
provided with kalaJcoas (beautiful native robes). 
My own quarters were with the king's chamber- 
lain, Colonel Judd, Captain Morse, and two 
other gentlemen. We only had one bed between 
us, but there was ample room for us all, the 
bed being seventeen feet long by nine feet wide. 
In all my travels I have only seen one bed larger, 
and that was the " family bed " of the babu, in 
Calcutta, which I have already described. 

As soon as the ladies had changed their 
dresses, tiffin was served in European fashion, 
after which the guests were left at liberty to 
roam about. Some of us went with our host 
to inspect the sugar-mills, and I was very much 
impressed with what I saw ; the machinery was 
of the most perfect kind : every modern method 
had been introduced, with the result of mini- 
mizing toil and securing satisfactory results. 

At three o'clock his majesty arrived, attired 
in a dark-blue suit with a crimson sash, and 
covered with lais, accompanied by Colonel Boyd 
and a trooper. He looked like a true knight 
of the mediaeval times. He was received with 
great ceremony, and the band struck up the 
national anthem, " Hawaii Ponoiy I, taken 



HONOLULU. 295 



somewhat by surprise, was standing in my 
shirt-sleeves, but the king, holding out his hand 
to me, said : " That 's the very way I like to see 
you, Bandmann ; this is liberty hall here ! " His 
majesty had a few pleasant words for every one, - 
especially for the ladies ; and after playing several 
games of billiards with some of us, and partak- 
ing of refreshment, he retired to his cottage for 
rest and to prepare for dinner. This was the 
sign for all of us to do the same, and while the 
band played one piece of music after another, 
the order of the day — a couple of hours' rest 

— was generally obeyed by the guests, during 
which a banquet was prepared in a large hall. 

At six o'clock we reassembled to partake of 
this great native dinner, and I may say that 
no expense or trouble had been spared to make 
it a splendid success. The table was raised about 
one foot and a half from the floor ; there was 
no tablecloth, but it was covered with beautiful 
mountain-evergreens, and decorated with flowers 

— lilies and roses of all kinds. The guests 
sat on mats and carpets, spread on the floor ; 
each was provided with a soft pillow to lean 
against, in Eastern fashion. The king sat at 
the centre of the table, and the ladies were 
appropriately placed amongst the gentlemen, who 
somewhat, predominated in number. The table 
was literally covered with all kinds of strange 
dishes, prepared in all manner of novel ways. 
There were meats, poultry and game, vegetables 



296 AN ACTORS TOUB. 

and fruits, served in every conceivable mode ; 
boiled, stewed, roasted, fried, and raw. For the 
first time I tasted luan (native) dog, which to 
my palate had the flavor of tender English suck- 
ling-pig. There were dishes of luan pork, mutton, 
and beef ; fish, chicken, and duck ; sweet potatoes, 
prepared in all styles ; three different sorts of 
'poi — owena^ s7ma, and apuwai; eike harnarnarno^ 
in all shapes ; ham and eggs, sea-eggs ; opih^ 
wana, hukui nuts ; and at least forty or fifty 
other dishes, served with beer, lemonade, milk, 
and iced champagne of the best quality; while, 
during the whole repast, the king's singers re- 
galed the guests with melodious native songs, 
and kept us in pleasant wonder and cheerful 
astonishment. 

After dinner, his majesty's dancers performed 
the hulakui ; this is a native dance, which it is 
hard appropriately to describe. It was formerly 
danced by men and women in their natural 
state ; but now they cover their bodies, from 
the loins to their ankles, with a sort of petticoat 
made of long weeds. The dancers go through 
a most varied programme, in which there are 
very wonderful contortions of the body and 
gymnastic feats ; while the singers describing 
the performance act somewhat after the manner 
of a Greek chorus. There is certainly a great 
amount of agility necessary to its execution, 
and the wild humor of the dance is fully under- 
stood and appreciated by those who are familiar 



HONOL UL U. 297 



with the native language^nd history ; but to 
those unacquainted with/^3se and not initiated 
into their secrets, it will seem coarse and devoid 
of interest. 

The king asked me, later, whether I could riot 
oblige him with a recitation, and when I wished 
him to name the one he desired, he replied: 
" Something earnest ; it will do my people good." 
So I recited Hood's Dream of Eugene Aram, 
which was received with prolonged applause. 
Miss Beaudet and a Mrs. Brown, a lady from 
San Francisco, gave some songs, and afterward 
the company took to dancing, but not the 
hulakui; we had had enough of that. 

At eleven o'clock supper was announced, and 
once more the company sat down to a splendid 
repast. There was little sleep that night, for 
a hula means a continuation of festivities. Still, 
I managed to get a few hours' rest in my huge 
bed ; I may here say my^ for that night I was the 
sole occupant of it, and had infinite space — a 
world — to roll about in. But I did n't want 
to roll: I wanted rest. 

On the next day, after breakfast, his majesty, 
attended by his singers, musicians, and dancers, 
was escorted to the steamer Waimanalo by the 
whole company. We journeyed by our host's 
railway, which leads from his establishment to 
the wharf, where, as the vessel left the little 
harbor, re-echoing cheers were given for the 



298 AX A<JT0It'8 TOUB. 

genial and perfect gentleman who reigns over 
the fair Hawaiian Islands. The remainder of 
the party then started homeward by road, and 
the king, having arrived at Honolulu some 
hours beforehand, drove out to meet us, and 
soon we were all assembled once more at the 
Hawaiian Hotel, where our festivities were 
prolonged till the next day, when the guests 
gave three cheers for John Cummins, and one 
and all declared that no nation on earth, for 
real, sincere, and liberal hospitality, equals the 
Hawaiians. 

The Hawaiians have lovely voices, and remind 
one in many ways of those mysterious wanderers 
over Europe — the Gypsies. Their music is weird 
and sentimental. There is a romance in their 
melodies which sets one thinking. In this they 
more closely resemble the European than Eastern 
peoples; for while the Hindus and the Chinese 
sing a^ sort of high drone through the head, a 
weary, melancholy chant at best, the Hawaiians 
sing from the full chest and exercise the whole 
gamut of the voice. During our stay we had 
many opportunities of observing this. There 
were serenades nearly every night, given to high- 
class people, such as the prime minister, the 
attorney-general, Dr. Magrew, and others, with 
whom we dined or spent the evening. 

I was very delighted to meet, during this 
visit to Honolulu, my old friend, the English 



HONOLULU. 290 



commissioner and consul-general, James Hay 
Wodehouse, whom I had not seen for thirteen 
years, and to whom I was, in the first place, 
introduced by the Duke of Edinburgh. He was 
as kind as ever to me, and his charming wife, 
a thorough English gentlewoman, contributed 
a great deal toward our success. So did my 
dear friend, Dr. Magrew, and his gifted and 
beautiful spouse. 

In regard to the public taste of Honolulu, I 
may say that the hon ton of the best society is 
of no inferior order, and that it improves consid- 
erably with every j'ear ; that the spirit of the 
higher social classes is j)ervading, to a wonderful 
extent, the whole life of the city. The plays, 
Narcisse, The Merchant of Venice, and Hamlet, 
were the most appreciated, and my houses were 
crowded every niglit I played. We were only 
three : Miss Beaudet, a Mr. Charles Lobbett, one 
of the actors sent to me by my wife from London, 
and myself. I had disbanded the rest of the 
company. It would have been impossible for 
us to get on without an additional staff, and, to 
my great surprise, I found a couple of ladies 
and several gentlemen in Honolulu desirous of 
assisting us. 

Among the amateur gentlemen who were most 
anxious to give a helping ]iand was an old 

Australian, a Mr. C , who is in business, but 

a man of true poetic soul. He loves Shakespeare 



300 AX ACTOR'S TO Uli. 

as he loves the fresh air, sunlight, sea, and skies, 
and has the great bard's works in his heart 
but, unfortunately, not in his memory. He was 
willing to play any part, or, for the matter of it, 
half a dozen, if required, in any play. He knew 
them all by heart, and moved familiarly in the 
whole Shakespearean world; but when he came 
to speak them he got so mixed that the inevitable 
result was a complete breakdown. But I shall 
ever be grateful to him for his good intentions 
and disinterestedness in trying to assist me. 

The theatre in Honolulu is far beyond the 
requirements of the city, and worthy of any first- 
class provincial town in the world, and it is to be 
deplored that good theatrical companies do not 
frequent these islands oftener. On one occasion 
I gave a benefit for the public library, when 
I played Narcisse to an enormous house. The 
trustees of the institution gave me a testimonial 
in the shape of an illuminated address in acknowl- 
edgment. The following is a copy : — 

" Daniel E. Bandmann^ Esq. : Dear Sir, — The 
generous and material assistance given by your 
company to the funds of the Honolulu Library 
and Reading-room Association, through the ren- 
dering of the play of Narcisse, at the Music Hall, 
last Tuesday, as a benefit to the association, 
calls for our hearty thanks, which please accept ; 
and we request that you will also convey to Miss 



HOXOLUH. 301 



Beaudet, and others who assisted on that occasion, 
our obligations and sincere appreciation of their 
kindly help. 

" Sincerely wishing you a prosperous future, 
" We remain, very truly yours, 

" Bealford B. Dale, President. 

M. M. Scott, Vice-President. 

H. A. P^vjRMELEE, Secretary. 

A. L. Smith, Treasurer. 
Alex. J. Cart weight, Alfred S. Hut well, 
C. M. Hyde, William Johnson, 

Walter Hnx, Charles T. Rogers, 

Henry Waterhouse, A. Mabquis, 
H. E. Hollister, Directors.'^ 

" Honolulu, Januaiy, 1884." 

Before leaving, we received an invitation to 
the celebration held in honor of the birthday 
of Mr, Gibson, the prime minister, which was a 
grand affair, the king, the nobility, and all the 
gentry being present. The king's own band, 
numbering seventy performers, played, and the 
royal dancers sang melodious native glees under 
the veranda ; while all Honolulu society, in silks 
and laces, crowded to congratulate the worthy 
old premier, who has been for upward of twenty 
j'ears in Hawaiian service. It was a very im- 
pressive occasion, and affected me more than 
any other reception I had ever attended. There 
was a cold spread good enough for Paris, Lon- 
don, Berlin, Washington, or New York, and 



302 AN AC TOE'S TOUIL 

champagne was liberally and freely served to all 
comers. 

Mr. Gibson is a man of great culture and 
sagacity, with an experience in Hawaiian affairs 
unequaled. There is a common impression 
that Colonel Spreckels manages the islands by 
reason of his great wealth and vast enterprises, 
but that is an erroneous view. He has done a 
great deal toward the development of the country 
and has great influence ; but the government is 
in the hands of the people, while the controlling 
influence and tendency of Hawaiian institutions 
are decidedly American. The king's political 
views are American, and, though he is not very 
popular with the people just now, he is a shrewd, 
thinking man, who is capable of accepting good 
advice, and will, no doubt, some day become 
universally beloved. The masses wanted the 
dowager Queen Emma for their sovereign, and 
felt their disappointment keenly ; but they are 
now gradually finding out that Kalakaua gives 
them prosperity and fame, and will soon see that 
he is the right man in the right place. 

" May he live 
Longer than I have time to tell his years ! 
Ever belov'd and loving may his rule be." 

The Chinese still have very considerable in- 
fluence in Honolulu, and a great many of them 
make profession of Christianity. I visited their 



HONOLULU. 30:5 



church. There were about a hundred assembled 
listening to the Chinese clergyman, who was 
reading the gospel to them in their native tongue. 
I watched him closely, and for forty minutes he 
never evinced the slightest interest in the sacred- 
narrative he was reading, by variation of counte- 
nance, look, or gesture. He read right on in the 
same monotonous singsong several chapters from 
the New Testament. It was a purely mechanical 
performance, very badly done, and evidently gave 
him much pain, and still more to his listeners : 
especially to those who could not understand him, 
( On the twenty-first of January, we left Hono- 
lulu, and after a rough journey of seven days 
arrived at San Francisco ; having been absent 
about three years and a half, and having traveled 
during that period upward of seventy thousand 
miles by land and sea, and having played nearly 
seven hundred nights. Out of the seven hun- 
dred nights, we gave fully two thirds to Shake- 
spearean performances — principally Hamlet, The 
Merchant of Venice, Macbeth, Othello, Richard 
HI, Romeo and Juliet ; the rest we occupied 
chiefly with Narcisse, A Woman of the People, 
East Lynne, Dead or Alive, and The Corsican 
Brothers. 

" The end crowns all ; 
And that old common arbitrator, Time, 
Will one day end it." 



NOTE TO CHAPTER IV. 

The Maoris. — Any who may wish to know more of 
the lights and shadows of the liistory, character, and life 
of the Maoris, than has been told in this chapter, should 
turn to " Old New Zealand, etc. By a Pakeha Maori. 
AYith an Introduction by the Earl of Pembroke." To 
this singularly interesting book we desire to acknowledge 
our indebtedness for valuable facts.— [Editor. 



w^ii 



